The shark has been perfect

80 million years. The cabbage-moths

turn gray in the factory districts,

grayer each generation, passing it

on, refining.  The shark,

a gray shape, could find them with its eyes

shut, by its senses picking up swirl

and electricity down to one in a million

units of ocean—that is, if shark and moth

had anything in common

but this: you split the belly of one washed

ashore, and it’s closet for hubcap,

galosh, cinderblock: literal piece-

meal storage of our assemblings. A hemisphere

away, a moth

opens too, with it sign

of the factory. And a man, whose only

perfection 8 hours straight is a 

stamping his part in the line, goes

home and tries hard in the night’s

gray connectings to pass on

only what’s best

in the tooth

and the wing he has

too when he opens.