Artwork © Ira Joel Haber

 

The Swimming Tongue
(Ictalurus punctatus)

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anaïs Nin

Covered in taste buds,
do you distinguish between sweet and sour,
bitter and salty, savory? When you swim,
does barbel discernment, whisker sensitivity,
shake your insides, disquiet your core?
After all, twenty-five taste buds per square millimeter
(times four pairs) could overwhelm any fish,
especially a channel cat.
Native to the Nearctic realm,
you lay eggs in safe hollows.

Cavity nester, my empathy glides with you,
understands your course of survival.
Yet if life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,
are you missing the sweetness of discovery?
As you move midst the fringes,
are you longing for the savory expanse of braving new waters?

Like the human equivalent to a swimming tongue,
do you, Dear Reader, also absorb waves of stimuli,
sustain a heightened sense of awareness,
experience enlarged feelings of discernment?
Do the emotions of others push you toward gentle harbors,
drive you into the margins of safety?

Steeped in self-exile, hidden from the shadows
of humanity, are you missing the sweetness of discovery,
the savory expanse of braving new waters?
Are you swimming in circles?

Note: “The Swimming Tongue” is dedicated to the highly sensitive person. An excellent resource is The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You (1996), authored by Elaine N. Aron, PhD.

 

Jeannie E. Roberts is a Midwesterner with Minnesota and Wisconsin roots. She has authored eight books, six poetry collections and two illustrated children’s books. Her most recent collection is titled The Ethereal Effect – A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had nine one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 online and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.