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XIX: Interior Seascape - Shoaling
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Where herring shimmer in clouds
ascending silver bubbles cluster
cathedral rays of sunshine pierce the depths
of skull's interior sunken ocean
sea of mentation, shifting tides of thought.
Beside encrusted basalt columns
waveringly poised as if in air
waking visions drift through sunlit water.
From enormous caves great fish eyes stare.
Hot flesh cools.
Subaqueous seasons ebb and flow.
Unwaking unsleeping
abstracted from sensation and the world
the constant steady rise and fall
of oceanic currents moves us,
memory stirs the shining floor.
Sometimes hovering here beside us,
strange presences glide the glittering sands
or tumble in the wave-foam of the shore.
Sunset and moonrise, green and gold envelop all
and endless separate callings from the deep.
Half fish, half woman,
companionably stay with me here
till putting off our last remaining fear
we no more keep the safety of this calm coast
where customary creatures come and go.
Passionately entwined
we slowly drift into the great gulf stream
conjoined with legions of the finned and winged
until is formed a universal flood
swept out into a cosmic timeless sea
where stranger lovelier fishes be.
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NOTES: This poem was originally published in the excellent poetry magazine 'Acumen' in Brixham, England in the Nineteenth Edition of April 1994. A link to the magazine is given below. My thanks to the editor of Acumen, Patricia Oxley.
The illustration is the wonderful 'Depths of the Sea' by Burne-Jones.
LINK www.acumen-poetry.co.uk
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