Symphony of the Deep
by Odin Roark

Like a symphony orchestra at work,
the ocean too has its own string,
horn, percussion and reed sections.

From fathoms deep
comes the basso profundo
that engorged percussive fissure
often thought of only as volcanic patience,
opening its bellows from time to time,
alerting oceanic musicology,
that the metronome is ticking.

Starting gently,
as but a grain of sand adjusting,
vibration arrests attention,
cueing creatures above to the language,
and like a Greek chorus of millennia-old remnants,
the remains of a crescendo
once of ancestral eruption’s drone
remembering its miniscule diminuendo growing,
arises.

As light makes visible,
smaller sounds of the deep
make melodious connection,
sending ever upward
harmonious timbre,
pulling the shell,
the minnow,
the whale and shark,
the sea weed and urban refuge,
a collective striving for finale,
a surface resonance enjoined
by a chorus of froth and foam.

Such is…

The constant reminder to
beach innocence making sand castles,
sun worshipers of closed eyes and open ears,
wandering sandprints of complexity,
that there often comes the resolute music eternal,
the break of wave and color,
the crescendo/diminuendo of ebb and tide,
the demonstrative sound of infinite tranquility,
the music only a symphony of the deep can make.

Oh, to listen.

To hear.