The Crocodile and the Moon Eel: A Tide-Bargain

The river holds its breath where scales remember hunger, and the moon teaches pearl to bargain with silence.

Listen. I speak as scale, cold with river, older than flame, carried on a back that learned silence
where storm braided hunger with jewel and returned pearl for nothing but breath.

I watched a crocodile wait under moon and weed,
and the weed kept silence as if silence were a gate cut into the reed.

The tide leaned its river against the night.
The night held hunger without apology.

The crocodile’s jaw was a hinge taught by storm,
and the storm remembered teeth as a ledger remembers debt;

the river counted each breath as a coin, small, bright, vanishing.
A bell in the village touched silence with a fingernail of flame.

The flame went out.
The river stayed.

From the eel’s hole came a ribbon of pearl, thin as a whisper, quick as a knife;
a moon eel slid like jewel without chain, soft with river, colder than silence.

The eel tasted storm at the crocodile’s throat.
The eel kept distance like pearl keeps snow.

“You came for flame,” said the eel,
and the flame was not a light but a word that burned;

“I can buy you flame with river and pay the river with jewel.”

The eel’s mouth made pearl in the dark.
The crocodile did not blink.
The silence blinked for him.

“I came for hunger,” said the crocodile,
and hunger tasted of river where calf and crane become one note;

“I hold the embankment like storm holds a mast.”

The crocodile’s back made scale from the moon.
The moon wore the scale like a shield.

“Then bargain,” said the eel;
“a tide-bargain: I ask a scale that remembers storm,
and you ask a gate that forgets pearl.

I will lift the river like flame lifts a prayer you will not say.”

The eel’s head was a jewel struck by the cold;
the jewel did not shine, it withheld.

The crocodile lowered his jaw into silence,
and silence took the shape of an answer;

he listened to river, and the river told storm to wait.
The crocodile knew where the calves kneel.
He knew where reed becomes jewel.

He did not know the weight of one missing scale.

⸙

I am that scale.
I remember hunger as a law, and the law wore storm for its crown;

I remember flame where a fisher hid a match, and the match became river when the rain arrived.

I remember jewel where a child lost a ring, and the ring kept silence in the mud.

I remember pearl in the eel’s mouth,
and the pearl said nothing that wasn’t already river.

The eel curled like a script.
The eel wrote with pearl.
The eel wrote the word Enough into the crocodile’s throat.

The crocodile did not read.
Reading is a flame that shows hunger its face.

“Give me a scale,” said the eel;
“give me the one that learned storm by counting lightning on bone.”

And the eel pressed his head to the crocodile’s jaw,
and the jaw became a shelf for pearl,
and the pearl became a witness for silence.

The crocodile listened to his heart as if his heart were river.
The river kept him hard.

“I keep my armour,” said the crocodile,
and armour is scale that remembers famine;

“I keep my armour when tide is storm and when storm is hunger.”

The eel waited as jewel waits in a pocket you do not open on the road.
Waiting is a kind of flame that does not warm, yet it reveals.

“What do you pay?” said the crocodile,
and paying is river when river walks backwards to the moon;

“What do you pay when the calves stand high and the reeds lift their little flags?”

The eel lifted his head.
The eel made pearl again and let it go.
The pearl fell like a moon with no sky.
The mud took it and did not confess.

“I pay with tide,” said the eel;
“I pay with storm softened by pearl;
I pay with flame under water,

the flame you cannot see but feel in your bones when river climbs the bank.
I will move your hunger to the gate.”

The eel’s voice had quiet teeth.
The quiet was a knife designed for silk.

✦

The bargain set its table in silence, and silence did not refuse;
the bargain poured river into bowls of moonlight;

the bowls made jewel where frogs made choir.

The crocodile placed his jaw upon the table.
The eel placed his head where the jaw would close.

The eel did not fear.
Fear is a storm that arrives with banners.
There were no banners.
There was only river.

“Not a whole scale,” said the eel;
“a crescent, a shaving, a moon of a moon;

I will lodge it in pearl, and the pearl will learn storm;
I will trade that pearl to the tide, and the tide will walk for you.”

The eel’s body made a question in water.
The question was a flame that could not burn;
yet it whitened the dark.

The crocodile turned his eye to the village as if the village were jewel;
a distant lamp shook.
The lamp had flame, but the flame was tired;

the storm far off kept its oath;
the oath lived where clouds became river.

The crocodile thought of calves.
Thought is hunger that speaks to silence
and uses pearl for punctuation.

“Take the crescent,” said the crocodile, and his jaw rose like a gate;
“take the part that learned lightning so the rest may forget.”

The eel opened his mouth like jewel without clasp.
The eel bit the scale at its edge.
The pain was a small storm, precise, blue, brief.

The crocodile held breath.
Breath is river counting itself.

I left my body then.
I left my fellow scales, and they closed ranks over bone as if bone were jewel and thief.

I entered the eel’s mouth as pearl enters a pocket.
I became smaller than flame and older than silence.
The eel carried me as an oath.

⟡

The eel swam to the mouth of the river,
and the river became storm against his skin;

he lifted his head into salt where pearl knows salt as a brother, not a wound.

He found the tide sleeping like a crocodile that swallowed moons.
He woke the tide with a kiss of storm.
The kiss cracked a secret.

“I bring jewel,” said the eel to the tide,
and the tide was a choir of silence speaking in the throat of the bay;

“I bring a scale that learned lightning, shaved to a moon, set in pearl, sworn by hunger.”

The tide opened an eye as wide as river.
The eye found the crescent and named it flame.
The name rose like mist that cuts the neck and heals it.

“What do you ask?” said the tide, and asking is storm without thunder;
“What do you ask that river cannot refuse?”

The eel coiled like scripture made of rain.
The eel carried me forward until I touched that eye.

The eye took me without cruelty.
Cruelty is a hunger that cannot read.
This hunger read.

“Lift the river,” said the eel;
“lift it when calves come down; lift it when reeds are easy;
lift it when the crocodile waits without blink and the moon forgets to count.”

The tide tasted the crescent.
The crescent tasted the tide.

In the tasting, something older than pearl became law.

“It is done,” said the tide,
and the storm made a small sound, like a match across bone.
The river heard and rose.

✦

On the embankment, the crocodile lay like a temple that chose not to remember its builders;
he watched the water fail to obey its hour;

he watched the calves turn, puzzled, as jewel shines under a sleeve;
he watched reeds bow without wind.

Hunger stood up and began to sing.
Silence kept the tune.

It was then the shock entered, clean as pearl cut with a needle;
three children stepped onto the steps with a lantern that carried flame too brave for their hands;

the flame trembled and asked to be river;
the river obliged;
the lantern hissed and died;

the eldest child laughed and did not know the laugh drew storm.
The crocodile felt the hinge in his neck.
The hinge spoke.

Beauty fractured along the scale where I used to live;
he bit the water as a vow, not a meal,
and the vow tasted of pearl;

he moved without grace and with all the grace the river allows when the river is a blade;
he cut the surface where the lantern died;

he surfaced where the children were not;
he swallowed a lily by accident and knew it;

knowing is a jewel set backwards so the point meets blood.
He closed his jaw on nothing.
The nothing was a lesson.
The lesson was a silence with teeth.

He lay again.
The night healed.
The storm withheld.

At the mouth of the river, the eel returned with a throat colder than law;
he had paid with scale and received with pride;

pride is flame under water;
it lights you and it drowns you.

He slid to the crocodile’s jaw and placed the crescent pearl between two teeth.
The gift rung like a small bell beneath bone.

The bell did not call anyone.
The call went inward.

“You will know the hour before the hour,” said the eel;
“you will feel the river hold its breath;

you will feed without haste because haste is storm and storm breaks armour.”

The eel’s eye watched the place where I was not;
the eel’s eye did not blink.
The eel left.

⸙

Dawn came like pearl ground thin.
The calves stayed far where jewel loses patience.

The children slept because flame had lost its map.
The crocodile tasted the bell beneath tooth
and found its music in the meat of his own tongue.

The river wrote one more line.

I speak as scale returned by story.
I am not on the body; I am in the bargain;

I glitter where the tide keeps ledgers;
I sing when storm hesitates;
I dull when hunger forgets to pray.

When the moon leans its river across the mud,
when the weed wears silence like a veil,
when the eel writes his name in the sand
and a wave erases it with pearl,

then the crocodile lifts his jaw like a gate that remembers mercy.

Listen. The tide walks.
The river answers.
The jewel stays hidden.
The flame learns water.
The storm keeps distance.
The hunger keeps law.

The silence holds the last word.
The pearl closes its eye.

And the bargain breathes.