Moving Forward

Witness here,

the tenacity of a jellyfish

in the ephyra stage of its life cycle.

Presently, it resembles a fleshy snowflake:

Clear and flat, with a central mouth, and radial arms.

To visualize this better, you can imagine your open palm

contains the central mouth, and your fully extended

fingers are the radial arms. Now bring the 

tips of your fingers together. This is

how an ephyra propels itself

gutsily through the water.

An ephyra’s arms are arranged 

symmetrically around its central mouth.

This symmetry allows its movement in water

to be steady, and for its adult bell to develop fully.

Should an ephyra lose an arm in an accident,

scientists predicted them to simply grow

a new arm in place of the old one. 

To test this, they performed

cruel tests (snip snip),

and through them, found

that the ephyra simply continue

struggling to swim with missing arms,

which causes them to flail rather pathetically,

but also serves to apply unbalanced forces on their

tiny, elastic bodies, which, over a day or two,

are pushed by aforementioned forces

into a new symmetrical pattern!

A different way to be whole,

through the very act of

moving forward!

Whale Fall

When a whale carcass

Avoids settling in shallow water,

And finds itself sinking deeper

Than three thousand three hundred feet

Below the surface,

While sleeper sharks

Consume soft tissue

in Bathypelagic water, 

And bacteria break down

Protein in its bones

As it finally comes to settle

On the ocean floor.

It is possible for a whale

To ‘fall’ 

Longer than it has lived, 

Sustaining a series of complex ecosystems

At each level that it sinks through, 

On a cold, dark, journey

That could last up to

One hundred years.