After Being Diagnosed Diabetic

I haven’t spent enough time in the ocean

to appreciate the calligraphy of the sea pen,

which was so obviously named

in the time of inkwell and quill.

How many things in this world

will I never know? In truth,

this pen is a colony, an organization

of animals that resemble a feathery plume.

And now I’ve begun to wonder

about that interconnectedness,

how I once saw a dance troupe

use their all-too-human bodies

to build themselves into so many

other forms—a horse, a bird,

an abstract pattern. My own body

is abstract, more so now

with a new diagnosis. Cells renew

and fail. The functioning world

ebbs and flows. Waves withdraw,

and water leaves its scribbles,

while something beneath

the surface quavers

with a message, a letter,

a story, a tome.

DAVID B. PRATHER

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and the forthcoming Bending Light with Bare Hands. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. (www.davidbprather.com)