The Sea Creatures
It's hard to imagine life under water, a place I've never been to before except for the beaches, leaving small traces of that blue substance after it's been washed away. When ever someone mentions water, all I can imagine is the cool trickling of the river onto the rocks or the deep blue sea but only from a distance.What happens underneath, I've read a lot. Sharks whisking their tails, the clown fish swimming in a perfect symmetry around the anemone, the dark liquid squirted by the octopus. But what is happening right now, while I'm sitting in my room, my feet resting on the floor, mere inches away from the fresh glass of water I've set out for my cat.
Maybe, the sea is calm, with whispers of sudden mist arising from the top. Maybe there's a battle going on right.this.second. The eels vs the puffer fish. Or the Hammerhead's vs the Great White. One can only imagine.
When I was 5 years old, I saw a sea anemone on the television. I thought it was an animal, a dark and dangerous one like so many others in the deep crevices of the sea floor. My mother told me it was a plant. Just a plant, I laughed at my Neanderthal self. To think a plant would scare me! Later many years ago, I realized, the sea anemone was really alive.
In the water, the fish swim about pleasantly. A stingray passes them by, straddling small purple creatures, on its back. A mother shark is giving birth to a baby that will one day devour ten people near the coast of Karachi. The vulpine sea floor gives off a charming glow. It is silent.
Poetry by Nabeela Altaf
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Written on 2014-02-21 at 14:17
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ngaio Beck |
