Difference

By Mark Doty

 

The jellyfish

float in the bay shallows

like schools of clouds,

a dozen identical — is it right

to call them creatures,

these elaborate sacks

of nothing? All they seem

is shape, and shifting,

and though a whole troop

of undulant cousins

go about their business

within a single wave's span,

every one does something unlike:

this one a balloon

open on both ends

but swollen to its full expanse,

this one a breathing heart,

this a pulsing flower.

This one a rolled condom,

or a plastic purse swallowing itself,

that one a Tiffany shade,

this a troubled parasol.

This submarine opera's

all subterfuge and disguise,

its plot a fabulous tangle

of hiding and recognition:

nothing but trope,

nothing but something

forming itself into figures

then refiguring,

sheer ectoplasm

recognizable only as the stuff

of metaphor. What can words do

but link what we know

to what we don't,

and so form a shape?

Which shrinks or swells,

configures or collapses, blooms

even as it is described

into some unlikely

marine chiffon:

a gown for Isadora?

Nothing but style.

What binds

one shape to another

also sets them apart

— but what's lovelier

than the shapeshifting

transparence of like and as:

clear, undulant words?

We look at alien grace,

unfettered

by any determined form,

and we say: balloon, flower,

heart, condom, opera,

lampshade, parasol, ballet.

Hear how the mouth,

so full

of longing for the world,

changes its shape?