AS SEPARATE AS SEA LICE ...

AS SEPARATE AS SEA LICE

As separate as sea lice in a lonely salmon pen
Adrift in the northern currents of some cold sea,
A pair of parasites, appendages drilling,
Antipodally plunged into a fishy host brain.

As separate as the flesh dressed head off,
Cross linked post mortem, no longer easily
Consumed, batiked canthaxanthinly,
Dubious, upside down through a pinhole.

Accumulating wax on the retinal screen
Of some unseen snuff mill: a lonely pin
Hole in a field at the brink of two gorges
Which lead to the sea, to a drifting salmon pen.

Two gorges coursing over a split stream bed,
Two sea lice antipodally drilling at the host's head.