Song for Cassiopea
for Kaden, marine biologist
Patricia Davis-Muffett
As a child, you were nothing but stalk—
polyp form emerging, latching
onto nearby structures, your body
neither male nor female, still
you create your clones, proliferate
in mangrove swamps—
too warm for many, too polluted—
you are easy in that way.
Leaving polyp form, you are medusa,
telltale bell and arms but no platonic ideal,
moons backlit in aquaria.
Among your jelly peers,
you seem confused, pulsating
upside down, elaborate tendril arms
forever seeking.
Swimmers who know are not afraid.
Your sting is mild—not like the man o’ war,
but you hold a secret. Under stress,
you will release your stinging cells, tiny bombs
awaiting prey, distant from your rococo arms
pretending to be coral.
My child, future scientist, picked you of all creatures
to examine. After navigating stinging waters of school,
carrying a body mischosen by fate. Unloveable jellies—
bane of bathers, enemy of engineers, useless
nuisance, beauty of the deep.
Now, this child, transitioned,
buries himself in science, studies
how you protect yourself,
disappearing so easily—
thinner than a contact lens.
I see you stretching back into Cambrian fossils,
doing the hard work of evolution, organizing cells
into your chosen bodies, accomplishing
miraculous survival.
Patricia Davis-Muffet (she/her) holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her chapbook, Alchemy of Yeast and Tears, was published in spring 2023. Her work has won honors including Best of the Net 2022 nomination, inclusion in Best New Poets 2022, and second place in the 2022 Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, and appears in Atlanta Review, Whale Road Review, Calyx and About Place, among others. She lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her family.