Deep

Hidden in rippled pages

smells of old salt and pressure

I turn quivering pages, vague guilt

I am not meant to see these things

their forms make no sense.

Food floating down to abyssal

hundreds of atmospheres above.

Deep jelly acorn worms

light up my insides, transparent

plasma balls, no child’s

curious hand to draw their current

Blind, purple and peculiar

no face no eyes no need to sense

the living fossil they trace.

An electron micrograph of

evolution. It makes me small.

Curl my toes, nauseous and

besotted with difference.

Angler fish hang in heavy space

reason against fear with small eyes

I worry their gory details for loveliness

and comedy

/if I had that underbite I’d be in braces/

delicate teeth curve a cradle

smooth spindles and gums

could make a gentle bed.

/no need for a whacking great Lumamax just/

a soft globe of light that

drops

like honey from a dipper.

Leave the creatures, tumble-turn to

roam the sub-photic black

It may be a cold dark place for you

but it’s not for a child of my mold.

Nostalgic for where I have never lived

I want to believe

if I close my eyes they disappear

extend my fingers, feel them glow

hold my breath for the hypoxic deep.

________________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from four peeps:

• @antipodeankate: "the sadness that comes from leaving somewhere you once lived, realising you'll never live there again. #orisitjustme" (Not just you! I am nostalgic for places I've never even been to!)
  
• @johnnypurple: "omg, have you done one about The X-FIles yet???!? #OMG!" (I have put XF stuff in before, but always happy to do it again. And again.)
• @realnixwilliams: "nostalgia"
• @sushipyjamas: "Angler fish. Worms. Dark places."

When I was a kid I found a book on deep sea creatures in the Warrnambool library, and was absolutely fascinated. I was a bit afraid of them, they felt like something I was never meant to see all tucked away in another world down there. I longed to go down there in the black to visit them, but I knew I wasn't supposed to.

In my usual nerdtastic style, the 3rd and 4th lines of the last stanza are a play on an X Files quote from Scully (in Beyond the Sea): "It may be a cold dark place for you, but it's not for Mulder." The other X Files quote is fairly obvious. A Lumamax is a type of enormous flashlight that looks like ones Mulder and Scully carry.

That's the story. Bit tired tonight. xx