Richard Parisio FAIRY SHRIMP

Richard Parisio
FAIRY SHRIMP

In my first year of teaching
………………………I led my seventh graders to the woods
………..to study vernal pools. Study? No—to stare
………………………………….astonished at what we found:

plump transparent one inch freshwater shrimp
………………………………………………sidestroked across a black pool,
…………………………….chalk streaks on a slate board.

I scooped some tea-brown water in my hand:
……………………………the pink knots of their hearts
……………….winked through their crystal cases.
……………………………………It felt almost sacramental

as if we had been invited
………………………to the marriage of earth and ether
…………….where sun first woke the water
………………………………………………to this life.

Later that spring we plucked the milky
………………………………………………gelatinous masses of salamander eggs
………………………………from those pools. They hatched
………………..in white enameled trays in the classroom,

things to know, to name, but none
…………………….……………..like those first unfathomables:
………………………secrets entrusted to us who were somehow—
………………………………dumbstruck as we were—
………………………………………………….exactly the witnesses needed.

Richard Parisio has worked as an interpretive naturalist for over forty years, in the Everglades, Pocono Mountains, at Assateague Island, and in NY’s Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley. He currently lives in New Paltz, NY, where he was a nature columnist for the New Paltz Times for five years. Parisio’s poetry collection, The Owl Invites Your Silence, won the 2014 Slapering Hol Press Poetry Chapbook Contest, and was published in March 2015. He recently earned an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Cedar Crest College, where he has also taught a course in nature writing.