Sea of Love
Impossibly fragile, our bodies entangle
as we bump together in a dark sea.
Our tendrils sting and paralyze.
We hug our prey to us and devour them.
How our beauty shines.
How we ceaselessly flex and convulse
to make our small progess, ignorant
of the great tides moving us.
Nearly too tender and silly to believe,
we make our way through a cold and
limitless void, the brine jampacked
with numberless lighted souls.
*
posted by tearful dishwasher at 6:28 AM
5 Comments:
aren't jellyfish the queerist things? hard to believe they are alive, those gracefully orchestrated underwater parachutes
and i would suppose they would write such poems about themselves and their floaty, surreal existance if they could - but you've done a great job opening a little window to what it's like to be one. watch them, and you hear music.
dreamy photo, scott.-
k.
Hey Karen-
Thanks for stopping in and commenting. I shot this at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of my favorite places.
The poem was, I hoped, only superficially about jellies, but I think it doesn't quite hold together.
Anyway, thanks again.
yrs-
Scott
I read it as being wholly about human beings, Scott, despite the accompanying photograph which I've come back to visit multiple times.
How our beauty shines.
Indeed.
Even as we hug our prey to us.
I recall seeing a beach in Gloucester after a red tide that was littered with dead horseshoe crabs and jellyfish. I hadn't thought of that memory in years, all those dead things suffocated, washed to shore. Thanks for reminding me of that fogotten image with this photo and poem.
The poem, incidentally, seems so strange coming out of you, since so much of what you write is closer to the bone of reality, and yet, it seems altogether apt because it expresses and embraces your vision of the tension and coexistence of beauty and ugliness, of love and savagery, of sin and forgiveness.
The void is cold and limitless yet lit with numberless lighted souls.
How is it that you possess so much hope?
Oh stunning photo, blue and gold, phallic and quivery. Such a world there, oh my. I'm going to the ocean this weekend, La Push on the Olympic Peninsula, the most NW point of the US, and the end of the world. One of my favorite things to do there is shine my flashlight into the water and night and see the jellyfish and the phosphors.
My favorite part of your poem is our small progress which I think covers it all.
Rebecca
Laurel-
Thanks for sharing your memories and thoughts on this. I'm moved and pleased by all you've said here.
As to the hope? It's a choice. I try to make it daily, but I often fail.
Rebecca-
Night diving is one of my favorite things to do, for the same reason- those jellies and the luminous phosphoresence everywhere.
You put your finger right on the spot with that 'small progress' line. The heart of the feeling I was after.
Thank you both.
Yrs-
Scott
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