by David Feela
With every pleasure comes a little pain,
which explains why the jellyfish
are lounging at the beaches.
The tourists don’t understand.
They huddle with their children
under an umbrella
which appears itself like
a giant jellyfish
preempting their vacation plans.
Scientists shake their fingers,
how we’ve over-fished the fish
that feed on the jellyfish,
how fertilizers from our lawns
running into the oceans
green more than just the land.
Stay flexible, the jellyfish say,
and what feels like pain
will be pleasure one day.
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s "Writers’s on the Range," Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. A new poetry book, The Home Atlas, will be released in 2009.
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