Deep Down

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury 
There are gardens built on bedrock
in the sea. Polyps, anemone
petrified, prettified 
some Gardens of Rest, weed-strewn,
where voyagers, stopping off mid passage
mingle with mariner, merchantmen
and bold buccaneer.

Silhouettes like Gothic follies
penetrate the gloom, ruins all akimbo.
downed by storm, and war 
and wreckers covetous of consignments. 
Ships decked in Midas metal, cyphered plans,
captains' logs and old world maps

In this sea-grass tangle of centuries
in perpetual motion 
multitudes quick-flip wheel and turn
silvery as murmurations. Raptors
hunt and ride the thermal pools
and far below, the constancy
of carrion crews, cleaning
up the currents. 

Here on the tideline, I search
the rise and fall of relics
those aiming too high, netted,
scavenged and gasping for air
and all the bones and shells they left behind.

For Lilian’s Poetics prompt @ dVerse she has given us free reign with a poem about the sea/ocean.

27 thoughts on “Deep Down”

  1. This is fabulous! When we used to winter (January and February) in Bermuda, we once went on a boat ride out to an area the had many many ship wrecks strewn on the ocean floor. Many folks scuba dive to see these ancient remains. Your poem conjures up what it must look like. Me? I was content to go to the other side of the island to a place know by locals as “sea glass beach” and collect sea glass of many colors. But the real prizes I sought, were the shards of china made smooth by the constant tossing of the waves….especially the ones that had a bit of patter on them. Once I found a china piece that actually had a date on it and a crown….I fancied it came over from England somehow and had once been used on a picnic by royalty! 🙂 LOVED your poem!

    1. I would have joined you on that beach Lillian – sounds divine and despite this poem I never venture mcuh further into water than waist deep! Thank you for the prompt which prompted these imaginings

  2. I love the alliteration and the wonderful picture you paint of those ‘gardens built on bedrock in the sea’ and the ‘ships decked in Midas metal, cyphered plans, captains’ logs and old world maps’.  I especially love how the ‘multitudes quick-flip wheel and turn silvery as murmurations’, and the way you write about beachcombing for the ‘rise and fall of relics…netted, scavenged and gasping for air and all the bones and shells they left behind’.

  5. My, how ruminations on abyss seethe wondrous strange here. A “silvery””” murmuration” of flowing ideas, indeed.

  6. A grave, a return, a transformation–such is our relationship with our beginnings, which are also, of course, our ends. (K)

  8. I really love this, and all those wrecks reminds of that fabolous book I read in my youth… Eric Linklater: “the pirates of the deep green sea”… I wonder if that book is still available, I read it so many times.

  9. I really like what you did with this one, Laura. You remind us of that vastness of the sea and how it swallows up all who remain there too long, some by choice and some by no choice at all!

  10. All of this poem is a sumptuous imagining of the undersea world, Laura, but I especially appreciate the ending for we all have beach-combed and tried to infer that place from the washed up relics in that liminal space between our world and the sea’s…

    1. thank you for your insightful words – bringing a much closer relationship between the deep and tideline – that other world and ours that we walk

  11. This is exquisitely woven, Laura! I especially love this part; “Silhouettes like Gothic follies penetrate the gloom..” sigh … you take the reader deep into the undersea world and allow them to experience it through your eyes 💜💜💜

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