Carter Davis Johnson

Pelican

A pelican is hanging

Above the milk green sea,

Watching the rounded backs of waves

Gather in heaps of liquid muscle,

Opaque except to his dark eyes

That see the fish that swim inside

The rounded muscles before its nerves

Dissolve into the salted froth.

With five quick strokes the pelican

Ascends a little higher still

And hangs his hollow bones on air.

His wings are taut against the wind

Like billowed sails drawn fast before 

The tempest’s howling homily

That tells the sailors on the ship,

“You are not kings upon the deep,

Nor the regents of your fate.”

But to the pelican, the wind

Discloses different wordless songs.

Then from its lifted perch it marks

The silver-bellied flash of scales

And snaps the strings suspending flight.

Its wings half-cocked in Cubist lines;

Its torso turning twice before

His form smashes into the surf,

And disappears between the troughs.

He hunts and hunts and knows no time,

But beats against the sea and sky

And kisses salt and tastes cold blood,

Beneath the red and reddening sun. 

Carter Davis Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Kentucky. In addition to his scholarly work, he writes creatively and has been published in Ekstasis, The Road Not Taken, Flyover Country, Warkitchen, Rova, New Verse Review, and Front Porch Republic. He also writes a weekly Substack publication, Dwelling: Embracing the non-identical in life and art.