Poetry
in Ocean
by
Rochelle
S. Cohen
Disco
Inferno
Way down
deep in the abyss
The nether
world is all amiss
There
you’ll find the main event
To be the
hydrothermal vent
Where
there’s a crack in earth’s shell
Life is
like a living hell
Four
hundred degrees Fahrenheit
A
perpetuity of night
And there’s
an unexpected thrill
A sudden
switch to artic chill
The water
pressure’s hard to bear
No one with
a lung would dare
Chimneys
choking charcoal clouds
Creatures
sheathed in dark grey shrouds
Down here
in the bios scene
Not unlike
Halloween
All of life
looking shady
Befitting
residents of Hades
Yet, here
in this cauldron’s brew
Where you
would expect a seafood stew
Nature’s
will is to survive
In the vent
stayin’ alive
Moving On
The water
temperature was rising
And the
oxygen content was low
Fish had to
become enterprising
Millions of
years ago
In shallows
where fish could swim
Mother
Nature took the plunge
She made
the fin a limb
And gave
them primitive lungs
The
transitional fishapod
Evolved a
bony rib frame
And, with a
wink and a nod
Adam’s Eve
rose to fame
Evolution’s
other miracle
Was a
primitive ear
The fish
evolved a spiracle
Now it’s
music that we hear
A movable
neck was in style
Atop its
head shifted the eyes
Just like a
crocodile
Fish could
look up at the skies
When Nature
wrote her memoirs
They were
not melancholic
Now we can
reach for the stars
Thanks to
the fish tiktaalik
Gulliver’s
Travels
Heb een
kijken, Have a look
Said Anton
van Leeuwenhoek
Water from
a
Was
anything but banal
Lenses
ground by diminution
Magnified
the lilliputian
He called
all these miniscules
By the name
“animalcules”
Bacilli,
cocci and spirillum
Bacteria
that would thrill him
Once there
was a small explosion
With
gunpowder he went a nosin’
Just a peek he was
so inclined
Luckily, he
did not go blind
Of all the
creatures he saw squirm
Most
remarkable were sperm
Everyone
was quite surprised
To know
that eggs are fertilized
In the
heartbeat of a water flea
He fathered
microbiology
Peter Pan
Don’t think
that you have hit the bottle
When you
see an axolotl
Because I
say with utmost candor
This is a
strange salamander
Its gills
are outside instead of in
That’s odd
for an amphibian
It’s
perpetual monotony
Is a of
state of neotony
Straight
out of J. M. Barrie’s pages
Here’s a
youth, who never ages
‘Cause it
won’t grow up like Peter Pan
Won’t give
up its larvae-like plan
With a
tadpole-like form and cute smile
It’s an
adult not juvenile
Never goes
through metamorphosis
Like Prince
Frog this calls for a kiss
A native of
South of the Border
An animal
made to order
For
biologists to contemplate
Just how
its limbs regenerate
We’ll learn
from the Class Amphibia
How to
regrow a tibia
Those with
a pet axolotl
Surely name
it Aristotle
Head
Games
I
“Off with
her head!” said the Queen to
For she was
full of hate and malice
The Queen
could not be any scarier
For you can
cut off its head to no avail
It will
grow right back as does its tail
And if your
head was split in two
Then there
would be a double you
II
When they
beheaded Marie Antoinette
The
Dauphine de France would have
had no cause to fret
She could
remain anti-eqalitarian
If only she
was a royal turbellarian
III
John the
Baptist’s head was served on a tray
By the
beautiful dancer Salomé
What a
surprise for stepfather King Herod
If like a
planaria John grew a bod
Jaws
There is no one whom I would rather
Be than the jawless fish Agnatha
I rue the day that nature's law
Ruled vertebrates evolve a jaw
From sharks to gators and the crocs
Hyenas, lions and the fox
When earth's sweet sounds became so shrill
With the blasting of the dentist's drill
With my jaw I'd take delight
To gnash his fingers with one bite
Noah
For my
father, Noah Cohen
Noah was a
federal government man
For natural
disasters he had a plan
For
hurricanes he drew a schema
For an ark,
he was head of FEMA
No animal
species were swept away
When Noah
was head of the EPA
For those
rheumatic pains and aches
He invested
in NIH
For those
whom the storm left worse for wear
Noah had
universal health care
Puffoonery
For Zoe
Asta
Puffins are
the “clowns of the sea”
Comical
birds with irony
With black
tuxes they look très distingué
But big
orange striped beaks give them away
With puffed
out chests they appear quite elite
But not
with their floppy, orange webbed feet
They cannot
soar like the swift peregrine
Their short
wings flap like a flying machine
Puffins
catch fish from an Icelandic fjord
In their
backward teeth, it’s a smorgasbord
And for
spring romance it is very thrilling
Beak to
beak, a behavior called “billing”
It’s a kiss
you think, you’re right to suppose
For a pair
of puffins in love nose to nose
Sillyates
I had a
Who was a
Paramecium
Le vin he
drank at l’école
Until he
filled his vacuole
The verb he
loved to conjugate
Was the
present tense “to mate”
If he
wanted to be more
There was
no time for l’amour
Paramecia
must split in two
Before they
dance a pas de deux
Starry
Night
When the
sea is still the dinoflagellates Noctiluca float
secretly on the surface
A touch on
a moonless night and they become scintillating Fires of the
Sea
Blinking
like phosphorescent fireflies dancing in the dark
Creating an
emerald starry night for the underworld
A celestial
canopy for oceanic nightlife
A jellyfish
medusa contracts in abandonment like a modern dancer
Listening
to the music in her head only she can hear
Undulating
nudibranchs, shell-less mollusks,
Move like
Salomé with her seven veils
Starfish,
with their five limbs lined with tube feet podia
Tap like a
chorus line of Rockettes, breaking up into spokes
Each podium
and limb moving separately, yet collectively, in precision
An audience
of sessile coral polyps sitting in their stony seats
Wave
“Bravo!” with their swaying tentacles
One more
encore before the rising sun
Extinguishes
the glow of the glittering sea
Early
Retirement
With the
tunicate we start to see
The dawn of
our possibility
With a
brain and notochord
The larvae
is the mouse that roared
The root of
our family tree
Of
vertebrate ancestry
But when
larval to adult stage switched
The brain
and notochord were ditched
The
metamorphosis was dramatic
From one
spirited to still and static
The elder
squirt siphons through its spout
But can’t
wonder what it’s all about
Early on
its song was sung
Youth is
wasted on the young
ForaminifeRap
Gangs leave
their scars
As painted
scrawls
On subway
cars
And
building walls
Names that
will scream
For
eternity
I’m not a
dream
I’m reality
A long time
ago
Gangs of
single cells
Left a lime
logo
In the
shape of shells
On pyramids
and
In the bust
of Queen Nefertiti
Nature
wrote to us hieroglyphs
Foraminifera
graffiti
Temptacles
A Swedish
Jelly named Inga
Was known
in the depths as a swinga
The
stunning Medusa
She
couldn’t be loosa
Would love
ya’ and leave ya’ and sting ya’
Slings
and Arrows
If you want
to get rid of that worm
Call the
archer echinoderm
The Robin
Hood of the briny
An urchin
that is spiny
And watch
that scalawag squirm
Peixes no
Carnaval
Meu peixe está pronto para o Carnaval
Porque se parace com um chinês animal
Com os grandes pretos e brancos olhos
O peixe é um betta, um dos machos
Ele tem um fantástico esmeralda rabo
Ele se espalha como fogo de artifico
Seu nome é Panda e é pequenininho
Tristemente, ele está um pouco sozinho
Faz as ninhos das bolhas de ar e espere em vão
Não tem uma fêmea para uma relação
Então, Panda vai nadar na praia em Bahia
Encontra uma fêmea betta e diz Bom dia!
Ela é bonita e seu nome é Beatriz
Agora, o poema tem um final feliz
Porque no Carnival até o fim
Eles dançam os sambas de Tom Jobim
Fish at
Carnival
My fish is
ready for Carnival
Because he
looks like a Chinese animal
With big
black and white eyes
The fish is
a betta, one of the males
He has a
fantastic emerald tail
It spreads
like fireworks
His name is
Panda and he is very little
Sadly, he
is a little alone
He makes
bubble nests and waits in vain
He does not
have a female for a relationship
So, Panda
goes to swim in a beach in Bahia
He meets a
female betta and says Hello!
She is
beautiful and her name is Beatrice
Now, the
poem has a happy ending
Because at
the Carnival until the end
They dance
sambas of Tom Jobim
Homecoming
Saudade, a
Portuguese word, no equivalent in English,
a profound
missing, a longing for a place, person or time.
“Estou com
saudades,” I am yearning for that which
brings me
back to my center, where I am home, at ease
to find the
peace and express the creativity within.
Is this
feeling programmed into our collective DNA?
It’s spring
and the female leatherback turtle navigated
thousands
of miles of ocean by means still mysterious.
Enormous,
but streamlined, this graceful swimmer
arrives on
the sandy shore of her natal beach to repeat
the
primeval ritual her ancient Olympian ancestors
originated
one hundred and ten million years ago.
In the dark
of night she digs a large, deep body pit
in which to
deposit her eggs, the adjacent forestation
affording
cover for her incipient clutch. She shields
them with
unfertilized eggs for fortification and
then, with
a sandy blanket, she tucks them in for
their two
month long sleepy incubation.
Saltwater
tears from the briny sea, accumulated
during her
long ocean passage, well from her eyes.
With a
heavy heart, she leaves her brood behind.
Wanderlust
is a potent magnet which pulls her back
to the
moonlit ocean to recommence her long voyage
and to take
her rightful place in the ocean’s ecosphere.
The
hatchlings crawl on their oar-like limbs to the
water’s
edge, as fast as they can, mindful of ravenous,
famished fish, dogs, seabirds, raccoons and ghost crabs
foraging
for a feast. Only one hatchling out of a thousand
survives.
Fifteen years after her maiden voyage she thinks,
Estou com
saudades, and returns to the beach of her birth.
Bio
for Rochelle S. Cohen
Rochelle S.
Cohen is presently Professor Emerita at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, where she was the recipient of the 2008
College of Medicine at Chicago Distinguished Faculty Award.
She is a neuroscientist with publications in synaptic
structure and biochemistry and hormonal effects on brain and
behavior. Rochelle is presently studying the Brazilian
Portuguese language. Her love of marine biology is reflected
in her present endeavor of writing a book of poetry about
marine life and science.
She was married to the writer and artist Rex Sexton.
Some of
these poems were published in: The Avocet, PoetsWest and Lone
Stars.