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The Aquanaut

by Tom Stockley

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lyrics

The Aquanaut
(or, The Rhyme of The Long Horned Mining Bee)

The Aquanaut emerges from the safety of his burrow
A sandstone refuge bored in peppered cliff-tops
A vessel of dirt and liminal space from which he dives
He tastes the air, rotates an amber face and readies his descent

He drops, drapes silky legs that linger on this lunar surface
of rock pool townships, muddied shores
as sea slaters scurry undisturbed, strange creatures of the deep
He skims the buried faces of the cliffs and crags
And hears the intertidal symphonies below
He knows that this was and will become again
A reef upon the land

The Aquanaut pulls back and climbs beyond the violet beach
Into honeyed sky that drips, he drops into the precious space
That sits between the sea and all he knows
The landscape is alive and it shows him where to go
So, he soars
Above coral reefs of wild carrot flower clusters
and everlasting pea its pink anemones shelter
viridescant beetles, drifting jellyfish of bright green fields

Slow worms slither eel-like in the soil, silver flecks reflecting
Golden dash of Yellowhammer, angel of the trees
Cetacean shadows cast by cormorants make shade
For crab-like spiders as they hunt the crickets
Between soil and the sea

The Aquanaut treads sky between the swimming butterflies
That flash and fight for pollen on this precious shore
He glides across the only atoll that he knows
This precious, threatened Eden seen only through the eyes of seasons
He dives through wrecks of farm machinery as silver wings gleam endlessly
Power lines fall overhead as shark-tooth Kestrel beaks declare
Their kingdom atop salted lichen rocks,
This pollinating nation of migrators making homes among the waves
A maritime matrix holding foliated bands of predator and prey

He pauses, pushed as far as he can go to where the flora doesn't grow
Stares through compound eyes at bleach-dyed pasture, presses on to home
Returns at dusk to salted earth and songbird skies,
Atlantic forest from the depths of time, his home;
This reef beneath the sky.

credits

released June 26, 2023

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IDIOT STRENGTH Bristol, UK

things made by me, with idiot strength.

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