The boy watched that mangrove snake slide
among the mudskippers, crabs, and shrimps near
the old Pearling Jetty. He wanted

to forget how to echo, wanted extinction,
from all the neat, repetitive points in his life —
schoolwork, homework and knotted

behaviour. He wanted to lose the skin
of hymns, to move differently. To be
lost from a quanta of regulations, which cut

out less or more. For he did not want
to be in a discrete value, but in an explosion,
magnitudes of stamen, fertilising every second

with non-discrete presences. Like the mangrove snake
which he envied, at least it could shed. Start again.

When, years later, discrete values of history like                         preservation
reduced the mangroves, and restored the old                                              Pearling Jetty,
both the snake and his longings to move differently                   disappeared.

He went into past tense: was, had. No longer here.                    Bottled
in an old day. Preserved against tendency and                                             starting again.
Remembering how to echo.

This poem was longlisted for a poetry prize in The Letter Review in April 2023, though not published in any medium.