Coelacanth

By Todd French

The poems in Coelacanth cover a wide range including faith, current events, history, every day life and the beauty of the natural world. This is Todd French's third collection of poetry and third with ReadersMagnet. Previous titles include Sad Superpower and Dragon Days. As with those books, Todd writes a

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jul 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890910653

Todd French

Todd French lives in California with his family. His interests include poetry, fiction, history, art, film and music, and birdwatching. This is his fourth collection of poetry following the summer 2022 publication of his first volume, Sad Superpower by ReadersMagnet. He has started work on a fifth volume, titled Harvest. Current projects include a short novel titled The Early Retirement of Sheriff Anselm. Favorite authors and influences include poets Ezra Pound, Billy Collins, Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner, John Steinbeck, Anthony Doerr, Cormac McCarthy Richard Monaco, Dean R Koontz and William Peter Blatty.

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Coelacanth

Copyright © 2023 by Todd French

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-064-6

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-065-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

ReadersMagnet, LLC

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Book design copyright © 2023 by ReadersMagnet, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Tifanny Curaza

Interior design by Dorothy Lee

Table of Contents

UNDERSEA SURVIVOR

LAST POEMS OF THE YEAR

DOG AND LEAVES

MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT BUNNIES

FORGIVENESS

JACOB LAKE, ARIZONA /2021

SEA-OSPREY/CRYSTAL COVE/12/11/22

TIDEPOOLS/CRYSTAL COVE/12/11/22

ANTICHRIST

CHRIST CHILD

TWILIGHT

CHRISTMAS 2022

WETLANDS/PCH/12/26/22

WINTER DOWNPOUR

2023

EYE FLOATERS

RETURNING FROM CHURCH/01/08/23

BABEL

FORGETFULNESS

IF CATS WROTE POETRY

THE GUARDS

JAGUARS

AND SCIPIO WEPT

HIS WORK (NOT MINE)

RAIN, FROGS AND TOXINS

SUNFLOWERS AND CHAMOMILES

ONE WORD

GARDEN

ASTYANAX

HECTOR/NIGHT-THOUGHTS

ANDROMACHE’S NIGHTMARE

YAGIZ ULAS

TURKEY EARTHQUAKE/THE FATHER

WINTER’S END

HE GETS US (AOC DOESN’T)

TUXEDO CAT

ANTICHRIST

MOMENTS

WINTER DOWNPOUR/02/25/23

LONELY PLACES

AND IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL MORNING/02/28/23

ANIMALS IN THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM

DR. FAUCI

CURRENCY

NORTHERN ROYAL FLYCATCHER

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING/BACK

FROM THE HOSPITAL 03/23/23

MONA LISA/TAKING THE KIDS TO SCHOOL 03/24/23

SPRING 2023

FIRST RAINS OF SPRING 2023

THE SHOOTER/NASHVILLE TN COVENANT SCHOOL

HERON

BACK IN THE RACE/HOSPITAL

INDICTMENT

EASTER 2023.

MOONRISE

GROCERY STORE MOM/04/19/23

CALIFORNIA POPPIES

LIVING WATER

APRIL

GRAY MORNING/04/27/23

BLACK MUSTARD/CRYSTAL COVE 04/30/23

If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

— Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

COELACANTH

It was so nice to hear that you were still around.

I just hope you get to stay.

UNDERSEA SURVIVOR

coe·la·canth

[ˈsēləˌkanTH]

NOUN

a large, bony marine fish with a three-lobed tail fin and fleshy pectoral fins. It is thought to be related to the ancestors of land vertebrates and was known only from fossils until one was found alive in 1938; since then others have been found near the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean and off Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Websters Dictionary

There are times I feel like my beliefs and convictions, my sense of objective reality,

Are as rare and ossified as a Triassic-era fish with a three-lobed tail,

That’s what it feels like: being a blue-scaled/white mottled piscine performer

Playing out a multi-million-page death-scene in someone’s crazy playscript,

Navigating the black and bathic badlands-evading an armada of wandering maws,

Vitreous thin-skins filled with wandering lights and mini-klaxons of candy-colored guts,

A derisive critics circle of goblin sharks, boxfish and northern stargazers,

All of them opining: when will the last of his kind ghost away into the deep,

Take The Big Sleep on a couch of trench silt and Megalodon teeth,

While a bioluminescent squad of mourners, tricked out like retro pimps,

Gusts by in baitballs-in flits and seethes of motion’s roil in premature hope.

What do you know of gender, old man? Will you say that there are two?

What do you know what a woman is? Who said that you were a biologist?

Up here where the orcas dance, we look at you and yours askance!

Will you say that you are fearfully made to the lobster mob in spats and braid?

I am an old swimmer-not chilling off of Indonesia-but punching in best I can,

Just trying to score my undersea cryptid’s allowance of lantern fish and wriggly squid,

Swimming nose-down to the grindstone (Coelacanths always keep their noses down),

Trying not to be a passive drift-feeder, a benthic incel waiting for the end,

But making deep assays, grubbing for the truths/epiphanies/revelations,

Haggling with hagfish for the right phrase/metaphor/simile/gerunds/adjectives,

Bellying up to the whalebone-bar, working out the fast scoots and tail-flicks,

Dorsal-fin corrections through this crazy, wounded sea of tylosaurus dreams;

Coelacanth that I am, I have to keep swimming, I can’t recuse,

My life of currents, variants, temperature gradients and muse;

As mad and malefic as things get, I keep writing, endighting,

Telling the pillows of trench silt and Megalodon teeth-not ready yet,

Smiling back at the guttering ghost lights and too wide porcupine quill grins,

Still swimming. Still have things to say. Undersea survivor. Coelacanth. Me.

LAST POEMS OF THE YEAR

I don’t know if these windfalls

Are worth a bite-you’ll know if they are.

But, Lord, this orchard

This sunset

DOG AND LEAVES

When we get too self-serious

Do you know what we need?

To stand in our yard next to a

mound of gold and russet leaves

While out of nowhere,

Blasting out of a neighbor’s hedge

A big dog, a black bull or a setter

With a coat as red as wildfire

Nails it like a missile

Burying us in autumn’s shrapnel

While we fall on our butts

Laughing ourselves hoarse

The dog running circles and figure eights

Around us as we bob like a top

Wiping away our tears of mirth

MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT BUNNIES

The most probable explanation would be that these drawings are just a medieval sense of humor: in traditional medieval symbolism, rabbits were generally harmless and cowardly creatures. But in medieval manuscripts, the rabbits were depicted as violent. The role reversal of these rabbits in the marginalia was mainly used for humor. The world turned upside-down was portrayed where the innocent rabbits could take revenge and hunt humans, dogs, or other predators. The ‘mean rabbits’ theme also was at the simplest level a form of topsy turvy, related to fools being able to make fun of kings and women beating their husbands or foxes running away with cocks (NOT male chickens). It was considered humorous because it subverted the natural law of things.

From Sad and Useless

The Most Depressive Humor Site on The Internet

I don’t know if you have seen the Apocalypse Bunnies

In medieval manuscripts, but they are blood-chilling.

Here’s man-sized Hoppity Hooper with a grim visage,

And a sword strapped to his side putting some half-naked sinner

In a headlock while his buddy, holding the restraining rope,

Prepares to give the bloke a braining with a mace!

What was the offense (I can’t read the Latin caption)?

Was the dude behind in the lettuce and carrot protection pay?

Were these demons donning Bugs Bunny duds

Enjoying a brief furlough from hell to have a little fun?

Look at the faces of these creepus lepus,

Posing under trees with tops like massive artichokes,

Fighting one another on limbs with barbs that look like

Miniature marlin sails-the crude verdancy lends it all a

Weird sense of disassociation somehow.

What kind of world have we stumbled into

Thanks to some illuminator/calligrapher’s hand?

Think that one’s bad-wow, you haven’t seen anything, yet!

Here’s another murderous myrtle-muncher,

Slowly beheading another kneeler, hands bound for execution,

The rabbit away at the guy’s neck one-handed, the other paw

Is outstretched to catch the guy’s noggin, the thin spray of gore

Complimented by the red leather baldric on the rabbit’s body,

Suspended from one shoulder to his waist.

The animal’s expression like the other two, bespeaks

A kind of haggard, weary animosity as if he is saying:

Hey, I don’t like this either, but we need to get through it.

I could be in my comfortable run with my sweet doe.

"But you got