4am Poem by Tom Harding

In my loneliness
I retell myself what I know
that for instance there is a shark
in the North Atlantic
thought to be four hundred years old.
A cold dark grey animal
that survives in the pitch blackness
of the deep ocean,
the midnight zone,
a scavenger surviving
on the decayed carcasses
of seals and polar bears
and whose flesh if consumed
is poisonous causing
neurological effects similar
to extreme drunkeness.
A ghost animal, who the Inuit
called Skalugsuak,
a creature more dead than alive
and yet existing somehow
at the time of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare
who I think must have
got up on occasions too
to sit on the corner of his bed
and wonder how to anchor
himself in this world,
landing upon a curious metaphor
as this for survival
that in the end there is only persistence,
this non surrender of rising
and putting one foot in front of the other,
the cold blooded instinct
navigating the dark.