A Jelly-Fish

The poem’s opening description of the jellyfish is at once distinct and deliberately elusive: “Visible, invisible / A fluctuating charm / An amber-colored amethyst / inhabits it; your arm.” (Lines 1-4). What is immediately apparent in these lines, as much as the language itself, is their rhythmic cadence, characteristic of Emily Dickinson in a poem such as “Hope is The Thing With Feathers.” However, while the words seem chosen for their seductive aural qualities, they observe nature with an almost documentary precision. They suggest the human eye perceiving a jellyfish in water, perhaps with light shining through its translucent body, making it appear “[v]isible” (Line 1) one moment and gone the next. The metaphor “Fluctuating charm” (Line 2) emphasizes the seductive effect of this uncertainty on the observer. As the poem switches to another metaphor, the “amber-colored amethyst” (Line 3) suggests the color of the creature, and its desirability, like a precious stone. The following line: “inhabits it; your arm” (Line 4) hints at a kind of symbiosis taking place between jellyfish and the observer, who, through the use of the second person, could be anyone. Despite the semicolon, both the appearance of the words on the page and the metrical pattern (“arm” [Line 4] rhyming with “charm” [Line 2]) encourages the reader—at least for a second—to view this arm as the thing “inhabit[ed]” (Line 4).