THE SEAHORSE

Seahorses

Don’t have

Stomachs or teeth

But

Gallop about

And

Suck food

Up their snout.

This hippocampus

Has

A unique corpus

Whose

Equine shape

Is

Hard to ape.

The seahorse male

Is the only fish

To become gravid

Instead of the female.

Before seahorses have sex

They hold each other’s tails

And caress in a vortex.

The male seahorse’s pouch then becomes a plump incubator

For eggs deposited by the female’s ovipositor.