Eschatology, Piscatology

By James Brookes
The halotolerant crocodile
idles in brackish water like a tow truck.
Salt glands meter in its diapsid skull;
smug fucker that the epochs couldn’t kill.

How easy “kill” then closes onto “smile,”
the lockjaw of a life that rides its luck,
knowing from hindmost teeth to jackknifed tail
Leviathan is neither fish nor mammal.

Source: Poetry (October 2014)