Ocean Secrets

Poetry by : Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Come in, come in. The water’s fine! You can’t get lost

here. Even if you want to hide behind a clutch

of spiny oysters — I’ll find you. If you ever leave me

at night, by boat, you’ll see the arrangement

of red-gold sun stars in a sea of milk. And though

it’s tempting to visit them — stay. I’ve been trained

to gaze up all my life, no matter the rumble

on earth, but I learned it’s okay to glance down

into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you know

where to look. Clouds of plankton churning

in open whale mouths might send you east

and chewy urchins will slide you west. Squid know

how to be rich when you have ten empty arms.

Can you believe there are humans who don’t value

the feel of a good bite and embrace at least once a day?

Underneath you, narwhals spin upside down

while their singular tooth needles you

like a compass pointed towards home. If you dive

deep enough where imperial volutes and hatchetfish

swim, you will find all the colors humans have not yet

named, and wide caves of black coral and clamshell.

A giant squid finally let itself be captured

in a photograph, and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes

scarlet and two kinds of violet when it silvers you near.

Who knows what will happen next? And if you still want

to look up, I hope you see the dark sky as oceanic — 

boundless, limitless — like all the shades of blue in a glacier.

Listen how this planet spins with so much fin, wing, and fur.