Rising from the Sea Bed

Thought I'd post some poems. Two of them (Portrait of Ray and Steerage) were published on Every Day Poets (Poetry?) which is now defunct and they can't be read, not even in an old fisherman's cache. They have been locked away in Davy Jones' locker on Atlantis Island for the past 18 months. It's about time they were brought to the surface--so here goes:

Notes From an Aquarium

Sea Life

Her delphic gaze holds sway

in monochrome relief,

contemplating some unknown folly submerged

in a floating world of obsidian depth.

An arc of old rope hangs aimlessly in the spotlight,

perhaps in lieu of an eel, or two?

Purple sea plants wave synthetic adieus--

the stage is set, but the fish have forgotten their cue.

Portrait of Ray

In the tunnel, children point and shout
as the giant ray steals past the glass--

the skirts of its fins ripple black to white,
a priest's surplice caught in a summer breeze.

To squeals of delight, it soars above us.
I take a photo and examine my catch--

a blurred underbelly in UFO livery,
two spaced-out gills mildly surprised,
either side of an alien mouth, aghast.

Steerage

At the bottom of the pool,
a nurse shark lies obsolete,
grounded--
a spent reactor cooling off,
its grey fuselage groomed
by a cordon of pilot fish.

We inch our way across by measured line,
while younger eyes look out for signs
of lethal geometry cleaving the surface
or a turtle emerging as an atoll awash.

Blunt flippers cause a stir of hope,
as they brush and bump the side of the boat--
oblique marker for their endless relays.

But most of us are looking beneath our feet,
at the shoals of small fry as they
fritter in and out of the fantasy wreck.

And in that gloomy arena of Victorian brick,
once the dearly beloved dolphins' crypt--
my mind turns over a century,
and makes that sandy bed a cemetery
of White Star Line dinner plates,
face down.