Sea Thoughts

At the water’s edge they drift,
The long fingered kelp, the mossy globes of weed
And in between these flicker silver,
The quick witted fry
Dodging and weaving through the shells
Of long dead molluscs
Cast ashore to strew the sands with chalky beauty.
Shapes once inhabited by slimy feet
Rendered small magnificences
And micro-cathedrals,
Hosting inside so many tiny bodies
Flicking in and out of existence
And paying tribute to who knows
What fishy god or goddess,
Who flicks their scaly tail
And laughs, bubbles rising,
To see the small fry darting round
These white lumpy pillars
Tipped by wriggling toes,
Tempting the brave to rasp
Their tiny mouths on roughed heel and little toes.

Do these ones, so indelicate in your breathing realm,
So brazen on their odious everlasting waste
That fills your secret crevices
And the stomachs of your once sweet
Shining-scaled and bright illuminated creatures
Who, to please you, carry their bright hued candelabras
To the oceans’ most private caverns
And now fail, their tissues full of alien poisons,
Do they imagine that you, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent,
Would not stoop from your deep shelf,
Raising your trident high,
Momentarily stilling the deeply resonant orisons of your great (now rarer) giant orators of ocean song
To lift your head, green tresses tumbling in the drifting currents,
Opening your emerald and onyx huge eyes,
Deep as the stars are high,
Raising a finger as if to say
“Enough!” and, despite your sadness
At the loss of those your mother made with such high hopes,
To touch the trident to the fissure,
Knowing the long slow cracking would,
Stone by stone,
Open up the deep plates like a violated fig
Until your waters joyfully join and dance and rise triumphant on each other
To sweep away the rancid selfishness of these most dispensable creations,
And bring back pure and gentle peace
To your revirginated shores and waters.

With my feet in the sea of Australasia March 2017 http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0051