The Air Plant

This tuft that thrives on saline nothingness,
Inverted octopus with heavenward arms
Thrust parching from a palm-bole hard by the cove -
A bird almost - of almost bird alarms,

Is pulmonary to the wind that jars
Its tentacles, horrific in their lurch.
The lizard's throat, held bloated for a fly,
Balloons but warily from this throbbing perch.

The needles and the hack-saws of cactus bleed
A milk of earth when stricken off the stalk;
But this, - defenseless, thornless, sheds no blood,
Almost no shadow - but the air's thin talk.

Angelic Dynamo! Ventriloquist of the Blue!
While beachward creeps the shark-swept Spanish Main
By what conjunctions do the winds appoint
Its apotheosis, at last - the hurricane!

Hart Crane (1871-1900)