Deep Sea

My poem Deep Sea was published in the Live Canon Children's Anthology 2023. It is inspired by someone I met in the Natural History Museum who is fascinated by deep sea creatures.

Deep Sea

His breath was heavy with names,

the story of each one, now preserved

by spirits and taxidermy and wax.

He brought alive the pinned butterflies

static behind the glass, I felt them

flutter, flicker and die

and heard the raucous seabirds

now stuffed and stitched,

staring with glassy eyes,

squabble over beakfuls of limp fish.

His lips were pressed to my ear

so I could hear him above the people -

most of all he spoke of the deep sea

about how one day he’ll go

where no person has been,

how he longs for the emptiness of it,

the desolation, just him in the murky silence.

How he will only be satisfied

once he has experienced the solace

of asphalt seeps and fanfin sea devils,

magnapinna and vampire squid

and he doesn’t know why they have names like this

because to him they are the most beautiful things,

like the sixgill sharks which drift and bask

in the darkness of coral gardens,

the sea rays, skates and cephalopods,

siphonophores and sunfish –

he tells me how one day he will leave

to find them - untouched, celestial

not beige and stunted in jars of fluid,

but down where they belong

in the deep sea,

the deep sea, where he promises

to one day breathe my name.