16th August 2020
All among moons, by light of Sun, a chance to swim…
Opportuning a high tide calm,
Down, late afternoon,
To where the black rocks slope their strata in.
There, clustering a depth so clear, a peaceful fleet:
Moon Jellyfish, many, pulsing gently,
Each prettily symmetrified
By lilac rings at compass cardinal points.
Knowing them harmless, into the sea –
So glad I’d brought a mask.
Through them, gently passing: under some, above so many others
With me wondering,
Did they know me there?
If so, how might they sense me?
Were they communicating, even, about my presence?
Incomparably more beautiful, water wafting,
Than when sad sand-spread fading curiosities:
All life denied by stranding,
Like ships to dry dock forever condemned.
Ingenious, how Nature has engineered
Such flexible strength into these translucent semispheres,
Seemingly so nonchalant
Of wave-break and rock-tumbling backwash!
With them I swim on; we harm each other not.
Such harmony of colour,
Beyond any artist’s imitation;
However, as such creatures have no eyes,
What is the purpose?
And, let’s take this thinking further,
How do these jellyfish appear
To any organism which can out-see us –
Down below the deepest reds, up beyond the highest violets?
Details, here, which ever evade the immersed eye:
All round each sea-mute smoke ring shaping bell mouth,
Myriad filaments, moving surely with an orchestrated purpose
Unrevealed to me.
Fascinated by so much not understood,
Intrigued by this species
Ancestored older than many an ocean,
I drift, breath held, limbs still–
Until Time’s playwright fresh-pages the next act…
Above me, astonished brothersisters
Skimpering about the barnacled bluffs
In bright new summerhol clothes;
Their pointy shouts to me
Shock the cove with bird-dispersing echoes:
‘You’re swimming in JELLYFISH!!!’
I smile, ‘It’s fine: they aren’t the harmful sort.’
The younger girl, spritefoot and gymnast-thin, much closer now:
‘Um, is is it nice?’
Knowing what she asks, I nod; ‘And where the jellyfish cluster, those patches all seem extra warm… So, do you have your swimming things?’
Her headshake, so theatrically regretful.
She, close enough to face-search
As I climb out and reach for towel:
‘How long have you been swimming here?’
I can’t resist:
‘At least ten minutes; or, I could say, more than fifty years.’
She gets it, with a pretty grin.
The brood soon magnetcluster a sea-smoothed hump
And share each other’s points and deepdown stares
With fulminating fascination until,
Whether that semaphore from distantly-sitting Mum
Had signalled ‘Yes,’ or ‘DON’T YOU DARE!’,
Three underwearing siblings gigglily help each other down
To launch in, overcautious, with suburban squeaks.
© Christopher Jessop 2020
