POEM - The Ocean's Heartbeat

Beneath the veneer of the tempest’s rage,

Past where the shattered sunlight descends and dies,

Past continental shelves, in a timeless age,

A rhythm pulses—the ancient, deep-world’s cries.

Not forged in flesh, nor bound by mortal chain,

This is the planet’s core, its liquid soul,

The metronome of hurricane and rain,

The constant turning of a vast, slow bowl.

This is the Ocean’s Heartbeat, profound and old,

A story in each resonant, throbbing wave told.

It beats in the drift of the tectonic plates,

A groan in the abyssal, silent dark,

Where pressure defines immutable states,

And life ignites from a primordial spark.

It is the patient, grinding, millstone turn,

The magma’s sigh through volcanic vent and cleft,

A power from which the very mountains learn

Their transient span, before they are bereft.

This pulse is the creator and the grave,

The rhythm of the mighty and the brave.

It beats within the great migration’s run,

The silvered, shifting schools, a single mind

That turns as one beneath the setting sun,

A billion lives to the deep code assigned.

The leviathan’s song, a low, vibrating thread

Woven through the hydrophone’s keen ear,

A plaintive, complex anthem, widely spread,

That holds the ocean’s quiet sorrows dear.

It is the tide’s pull on the waiting shore,

The “come and go” forevermore.

It beats within the coral’s whispered breath,

A calcified dream in sun-dappled shallows cast,

Building cathedrals facing life and death,

A delicate architecture meant to last.

It is the kelp forest’s slow, swaying dance,

The phytoplankton’s green, exhaling fire,

The single, most essential, fleeting chance

That fuels the world with photosynthetic choir.

This pulse is life in its prolific swell,

A generative, fecant, salty-smelling spell.

But now a discord mars the deep-world’s song,

A faltering stutter in the steady rhyme.

The beat grows frantic, strained, and wrong,

Betraying the slow murder of our time.

The acid whisper, a corrosive sigh,

The plastic shard where the jellyfish should drift,

The warming blanket from a bleeding sky,

A gift withdrawn, a priceless, stolen thrift.

The silent reef, a bleached and brittle bone,

A haunting echo of a glory overthrown.

The frantic pace, the fevered, rising swell,

The melting ice, the altering saline blend,

Are chapters in a tragic, human-spelled

Narrative that portends a bitter end.

The heartbeat quickens with a sickened flush,

A fever dream of chaos and of pain,

A world pushed to the brink, a silent hush

Before the final, crashing, downpour rain.

We hear the change, a tachycardic dread

Thrumming beneath us, from the ocean’s bed.

So let us listen with a different ear,

Not as exploiters, standing apart,

But as the children of the sphere,

Who bear the wisdom of the head and heart.

To still our noise, to curb our greedy hand,

To let the ancient rhythm find its course,

And once more sanctify the sea and land

With its restorative, primordial force.

For in its beat, our own pulses are entwined,

A shared, most fragile destiny, combined.

The Ocean’s Heartbeat is a call to wake,

A throbbing, vital, deep, and urgent plea.

It is the promise that we still can make

Amends, and set the captive waters free.

To be the stewards, not the lords of all,

To answer with respect, and not with spite,

To ensure the eternal rise and fall

Continues its majestic, sacred rite.

For if that heartbeat ever should grow still,

The world will hold a cold and mortal chill.

Short Summary :

The ocean's eternal pulse is the planet's vital life force, a rhythm of creation, migration, and deep time. Yet, human action has introduced a discordant, fevered strain to this ancient heartbeat, threatening its delicate balance. This poem serves as both a reverence for the sea's profound majesty and an urgent plea for stewardship, reminding us that our survival is inextricably linked to the health of this vast, blue heart.