Hippocampus

I like the thought of it, a small sea horse
curled in the dark coral reef of my brain.
Hippo from the Greek for horse
and kampos for sea monster. Imagine it
no bigger than a fingertip, my own
mounted sentry, stationed there
as gatekeeper to the catacombs
of memory itself. It’s deep
and alone in the explicit night-sea
of remembering where
I left my glasses, or in what
numbered spot I parked the car,
or even in the name of the guy who I was
certain was supposed to come by sometime
today to talk about the thing I can’t
remember anymore. Nobody’s perfect. Oh,
but when she’s humming, my hippocampus
is beautiful as a wife at a cocktail party
mouthing, like a parrot fish spitting sand,
the words: Phyllis— Phyllis—Phyllis
at the precise moment
I blankly accept Phyllis-
from-payroll’s clammy hand
into mine. How lucky
to have this coronated monster,
this sea horse of memory tucked
so compactly away in the temporal lobe.
I can almost see it, its spiraling tail
tethered to the black helix of kelp
rising from the unconscious,
its long nose and dorsal fin swaying
against the muted sputter and pull of whitecaps
listing toward shore. Oblivious
even to the stars streaking through
the Milky Way, until I call on it again,
to locate the point of a story that’s gone
on too long, and soon a brilliant
constellation of jellyfish begins to pulse,
and a trillion bioluminescent algae cells
ignite, like neurons, an entire ocean around it.

Sean Nevin
“Hippocampus” is from Oblivio Gate (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008).