Home With The Diatoms
When I was a child
before sleep we prayed
for love to be shown, for safety to stay,
starved children in Korea to be saved.
Then the light would go off.
I'd put my real bed
of conches and nautilus twists
under the toss of the night's waves.
Regal on the seafloor
shells poked their bubbling heads
up out of snow-sand. Aquarelle fins and
gold-grey eye-globes blinked around me,
all greeted with a princess flip
of my green-scaled tail.
Reclined with coelacanths,
eyes blueing in my head,
all my mother-cut hair grown
long as a squid's arm,
I waited to swim into sleep,
watching the shadows of
far-above gulls mottle the green ceiling,
alone yet blanketed in
life watching over me, drowsing
to the epochs' stereopticon flash.
When we met in the deluge
you called in a lost language
for that nightspell to rise, to link us,
to sink us completely
in diatoms, wave after wave,
kissing underwater, not afraid to breathe
not afraid to drown, kelp-hair
in the undertow fanned and fluttered
summoned by a sea-fire of peace
to make ashes of fear.
March 2022
posted for earthweal's weekly challenge:
Process note: "..Diatoms are unicellular [microalgae]: they occur either
as solitary cells or in colonies, which can take the shape of ribbons, fans,
zigzags, or stars..Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the
Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on
the planet each year, take in over 6.7
billion metric tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live,
and constitute nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans..."~wikipedia
Images: The Bright Liquid, © Edmond Dulac Fair Use
Pink Shell With Sea Weed, 1937 © Georgia O'Keefe Fair Use
Our dreamworlds know things our conscious minds will never understand.
ReplyDeleteThis is mysterious and beautiful, Joy.....such a lovely dreamscape. I especially loved you as small girl getting into your "real bed of conches and nautilus twists
ReplyDeleteunder the toss of the night's waves." Lovely. A wonderful sanctuary, the safety of sleep and dreams, when they are good dreams.
Of course the child is sheltered in her imagination, safest place in the world when the night-tides descend ... A gorgeous seas-bottom panoply from a children's book (love the hair long as a squid's arm) ... I see diatom billows where triton and siren kiss. 'Tis the safest place to be. Gorgeous stuff Hedge.
ReplyDelete'a sea-fire of peace' is a wonderful emblem of shelter!
ReplyDeleteI was watching a program a while back about hot vents deep in the ocean beyond where the sun can reach, and they are teeming with life anyway. I believe they said that the odd plant-looking things living on the vents were diatoms. It was pretty facinating.
ReplyDeleteA sea-fire of peace sounds pretty fine, especially in view of how things are playing out up here on the surface.
Ah a mer-child swimming in a sea of dreams. I love the floating freedom of this. The return to the sea of dreams to be nurtured and loved. Suzanne (wordpress blog - Mapping Uncertainty)
ReplyDeleteI found that "Diatoms are algae that live in houses made of glass." That they breathe, that they ornament their transparent walls with designs. To bed with them (and the "you") would be brilliant and so safe--if we were mer-people and maybe turtles and hermit crabs. Someday humans may be called back into the sea. That may be our best hope! Your poem made me dream.
ReplyDeleteLucy in the sea, with diatoms. The dream of your last couplet, I'll remember that ~
ReplyDeleteBloody love your words, Joy, I know I sound like I'm repeating myself! But it's all soooo good!!! The whole thing but that final stanza is whip-smart awesome. These lines though:
ReplyDelete"kissing underwater, not afraid to breathe
not afraid to drown, kelp-hair
in the undertow fanned and fluttered
summoned by a sea-fire of peace
to make ashes of fear."
EXQUISITE <3