This deep-sea fish is as black as its home
that lies a kilometre under
in a freezing silence of pressure
where no light arrives. There, the creature
lived in a network of fleeting events,
a twitching skin of blind nuances
and occasional illumination
which it must have seen only dimly.
No one knows why the fish left that place
and rose through the divisions of darkness
towards the pale, entranced light,
and then the jostling colours, of the surface.
By then, its universe has drained away,
leaving a void in which it is helpless
and dies, after the faintest glimpse of this
brilliantly clear, poisoned, shrunken world.
Published in The Lonely Crowd
S.C. Flynn 