Moon Jellyfish
by Sharon Black
Unhitched, you rise—a Chinese lantern trailing ribbons,
clenching and unclenching,
swallowing space as you sail
with fathomed grace through the dark;
now motionless, adrift; now climbing an invisible cord,
more trick of light than living thing,
a palpitation, a visual echo
of your old name, sea lung.
Your bell’s a nerve net, frilled with cobweb
strands; four pink gonads glow
like sun-shot cherry blossoms; tentacles waft
plankton into the harbour of your mouth—
like the mind feeling its way into a half-remembered idea, the tongue
into a familiar sex, the way we sense, by degrees,
the murmur of wind, the brush
of weed against ankles, the shiver of wing-beat
as a fulmar skims the foam.
On bright nights you gather in your thousands,
phosphorous, moon spawn,
utterly dependent on your mother’s pull, a bloom
of photons returning to their source,
a fleet retreating to the carrier, the flux
of neurons during each inhalation
as the breath journeys through sleep,
washes up with a sigh.
Sharon Black is originally from Glasgow but now lives in the Cévennes mountains of southern France. She is widely published and won The Frogmore Poetry Prize 2011. Her poetry collection To Know Bedrock was published in 2011 by Pindrop Press. And here’s her website.