Seahorse

Clearstories

24.5×24 in

Archival Inkjet Print

2014

$1,750/set unframed

Seahorse by Naila Moreira

He is maternal, the little man,
standing erect among weeds
washed by waves.
In the thick pouch
of his protruding belly
the baby horses wait, each strange
and slow and sweet, like him.

An endless ocean waters
the sea of his hopes, a space
beyond imagining:
a sparkle in the inner distance
under sunlight, then a long shadow.
A world goes on beyond sight,

beyond the thread of reed
where he clings, a root in shifting sands.
Now this one, in an aquarium
harboring his young, where he nods and coils.
His triangular head
looks not into blackness

but human faces staring.
An ancient knowing lives in his eyes,
a sea that got in there somehow,
each joint of his tail a cartilage
of that relentless sequence
of purposeful change,

to clasp in one’s tail, one’s pouch
the whole ocean and its past,
the joints of geology,
of history.
All that creaks as he lets go
and takes hold again, as though it were still there.