Rite of Passage

Her hand searched the opened jeans
as if she were trying to snag
a floating carrot out of a barrel of water,
one also containing fish she feared to touch.
Finally, I emerged, fat as a mackerel,
slick with sweat and trepidation,
squeezed so hard as to weep
through my single, blinded eye.
Her teeth gleamed in terror and I
would have shied away but for that need
that unites the school and the shark
in the great chain of being. A few clumsy
thrusts into her uncomfortable mouth,
the sudden, wild froth of wave and sea,
and we were done, to settle in
to more leveled, languorous coupling
in the seasons yet to come.