Here is the third poem from Ocean Saga
Underwater
Lyme Bay’s treasures in abundant measure
include golden cup coral on a reef.
Simon saw scallop dancing;
the girl, a sea horse prancing
and delicate pink sea-fans, too.
Then a fish shaped like a man,
clamped Simon with a scaly hand,
and attached like a limpet,
helped him breathe.
Out from the ocean deep spread calm.
Simon wondered how he could be underwater
but not yet drowned, then stranger still
he heard a reply.
Was it only sea-water playing tricks with sound?
The sentient squid has a large domed head
and underneath, a soft belly which suffers pain.
The squid is proud, filling the oceans aloud
with wise sayings wrestled from worms.
Whereas the cuttlefish, head as big as a dish,
keeps his thoughts all to himself.
He’d rather scuttle, leaving his foes in a muddle,
befuddled in a blanket of ink.
Our teenage girl, sometime surfer, is impressed.
She drifts. An up-current jerks her hand away from his.
Soon she is entranced, all her senses enhanced,
in amongst a garden full of coral.
Lost in detail, keen to learn,
she is watched by many and various eyes.
Bearded by algae, concealed by weed,
there lurked an eighty year old lobster.
All its long life had been lived in a rock tunnel,
until it emerged from below the reef.
Despite it not revealing any teeth,
a flash of pincers made the visit brief.
Off Simon and surfer went instead,
to catch a thief.
“Meet the squatter always looking for a step-up in real-estate,
the gypsy clown of the depths,” said Simon.
“This is a whelk shell housing a hermit crab:
tweak those claws, tickle its feet,
such a small crab’s body armour is never complete.”
“It’s a hermit’s life for me,
no-one ever comes for tea.
I’m small like a periwinkle
though not quite so tiny as a pea,
and tho’ I may look imprisoned
I am perfectly free.
I may jerk like a paraplegic
but my movements are strategic.
Rumour has it, I am Crab.
My current ‘des res’ belonged to a whelk.
Be sure to turn me over with stealth
and be warned, I may nip,
my little pincers do grip.
No-one is shoving me into a crab sandwich.
A hermit crab is unpleasantly crunchy
when you eat one by mistake.
It spoils the succulent flesh of seafood
and tastes horrid with tea and cake.”
The tide is turning.
It’s time to go.
Simon knows all about the sea now,
its hidden depths, its ebb and flow.
But this is no time for impatience or complacency:
before releasing him, Neptune extracts a promise.