Sea Fire
by Michael Doyle

I brush the strands of your long hair
It is as soft as the finest silk
I can feel it as you stand there
And we talk about the seas white as milk

As our ship passes through deep blue water
Standing on the bow, a daughter and her father
We sail into a patch of luminescent white
To you and I, it seems a startling sight

You've always loved the haunted places
As we've explored all the phantom traces
And now the horizon is a flush, subdued glare
The face of nature changes as we stop and stare

Bioluminescence can seem vast patches of living light
But we didn't know much about this on that night
Circular dances arise off the distant island's shore
In an ocean full of mysteries left for us to explore

Despite a plethora of tall tales, we'd been fed
We saw no sense in being filled with dread
However much our imaginations love a good swim
We weren't superstitious and hoped the light would not dim

It was not until mid-year nineteen eighty-five
The milky white was found to be bacteria and alive
This bioluminescence can be seen from out in space
Dimly faint, mankind's instruments manage to trace

Despite the noisy imagery of airglow and clouds everywhere
That has diffusion  and is widespread in a veil of light
The sea fire can be like sailing across a sea of snow, so fair
This, to us, was just another mystery of the ancient night

The milky glow has what appears to be a detailed chemistry
We long to understand this as we look into Earth's eternity
For us, it is enough to be floating on clouds of white
As a father and daughter dance on the impossible into the night

It has taken this long for mankind to learn and to know
Nearly everything in the seas has some degree of its own glow
As we pass below into the edges of light and deep darkness
We've found a strange mix of beauty and misunderstood harshness

But nothing is quite as harsh as mankind's disruptions
As we encroach on the barriers with our brash interruptions
We can only pray our changes don't result in a bad permanent
The ocean floors are infinitely closer than the firmament

(c) February 13, 2024    Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved