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The Behemoth, Submerged
He's thankfully placid, continent-sized;
eyeless in hide with maw opened wide -
able to drain with a swallow such seas
that dot all our nations and drown us in reeds.
Momentum from current and liquefied air
that pull all his mass, abyssal to snares
caught on his bulk from boats with their winches,
torn down to depths in sways made of inches.
As per his drifting, his marginal 'lax,
creatures don't fear, nor dare they attack;
but come to conform, so tapered and dull,
swirling in droves about the flesh of his hull.
Blind to the sunlight or its absence in dark,
wading at ease with immensity stark
against the frontier of blues and of black,
with faint little glimmers that peck at his back.
And shy as he isn't, soundless he is;
his traveling porous like something candid,
with gears beyond grasp affixed to his lid
that grind without oil or layout or grid.
Though only a moment, this moment he'd pause,
and rear up his snout in something like awe
of shimmering surface that houses the sky
and stars made to glimpse when darkness is nigh.
In this reprieve, a clear thought has course:
the behemoth recalls a familiar remorse.
The twinkle obscured by thrashing of waves
gives rise to a knowing that's buried in haze.
But just as his interest seems piqued and affixed,
he begins a descent, inattentive to quick
and flitting small life that must flee from below,
just as they'd done when he'd come long ago.
