Water Babies

By A.E. Bayne

Watch them float and kick like bloated, brackish fish -
every muscle tense, their infant bodies sink and bob.
Eyes bulges of fleshy jelly,
the pupil-iris pair flashing, wildly blind and searching for a side.
Small faces roundly taunt, like the mouths of ghosts at Halloween,
learning that the human body is not unlike dead wood in water.
Delicate pink mouths now garish purple with chilled corpus wanton,
as chests heave for one element, but two unwittingly enter
on this aquatic roller coaster ride.