A swarth of blue, full of kites
Interweaving, dancing,
Like a child's drawing.
Rays, black and white-
Like something out of an old film-
Glide with infinite grace,
Prehistoric.

A net looms in the murk,
Wide as the horizon,
High as the sky,
Deep as the sea.
An ominous lattice,
Foreboding,
It cuts through the waves
Sweeping like a sonar, searching.

A kite will get caught in the net,
It's freedom ensnared.
But their labour is to no avail,
This trap is not deliberate-
No men toil at the ropes,
No crank strains with the weight of the catch.
It is free, uncontainable.
This net floats silently, alone, isolated.
Waiting to entangle a life in it's deadly mesh.
Waiting to hold it, embrace it, encircle it
In a danse macabré.

A fin slices through the waves.
Like a warm knife through butter,
It cleaves the ocean.
Below, a grey shape convulses,
Writhing slowly, surely,
with measured movements.
The shark dives, moving with
Humble agility, it grasps it's prey with
Awkward dexterity in tyrannical jaws.

Hooks scour the sea, carving it up.
They trail behind, trying to keep up
With the boat, with demand.
A rope is not enough, it snaps
Leaving a cold curve of metal,
Spiralling through the murky depths
Casting about for something to latch onto.

A shark thrashes behind
Left in the wake of the boat.
Plumes of scarlet colouring the water,
Like bruises blossoming underneath
A watery complexion.
A magnificent beast snared-
The redoubtable, longing for death.
The barb digging grooves into
Innocent flesh, deeper with every
Solemn movement. Inching closer to the brain.
Tragic apoptosis.

Vibrant trampolines
Bounce on cushions of water,
Like shimmering aquatic light shows.
A cloud of jellyfish, a smack.
Like a cobalt field of mushrooms,
Jig in an underwater disco of moving bodies
And flashing colours.
Plastic bags balloon out,
Water propelling it away, repulsed.
But the bag only swirls closer
Like a white ghost,
Pale face crumpling, anguished, haunting.
The once colourful marks now faded
The bag is now little more than a
Plastic death trap
Following crowds like a hungry wolf,
Ready to pounce.

A trampoline is caught, scooped up
In an electrifying last resort,
The bag is caught in a haze of shock.
But the tormentor is immune to such offence.
The jelly fish can do nothing but surrender
To the opponent, for it has clearly won.
It does nothing as it falls from the throbbing crowds
For what can it do?
An unwelcome end. A cruel respite.

A flash of silver grazes the surface,
Scattering and regrouping,
Dividing and converging.
The shoal moves as one body,
One mind.
They continue their dance, twisting and turning,
Not dancing on the sea, but with her, as her.

A scar of darkness blemishes
The perfect skin of the surface.
A slick of oil, as bold as if a child had painted it
Curdling in the salty water. Pestilent.
Around it, the water is ever moving, ever changing,
But the slash of oil never moves- eternal
Like it was a wound in the side of the very sea herself.

Silver is turned to black as the oil coats the fish,
Cloaking them in a blackness as dark as a moonless night.
All senses are lost, the world becomes a dark, frightening place
Where no familiar sounds or smells linger,
And where even the restless shifting of the sea
Dare not intervene, as the fish falls away into the dark,
To lay on sands that will never glimpse sunlight
Or feel the warmth of it's rays.
And where bigger fish lurk, waiting for such delicacies to drop.
But none dare to touch this sole fish,
For it has been coated in oil such that it will lay there
Until it becomes a fossil, and joins all those others
Waiting patiently to be found in the darkness.

So that just a few people might become just a bit more aware of this.

That 'happy one' really is never going to happen at this rate...
Holly x