Birth
Life was conceived on our star-lit Earth
Amidst hazy blue dreams of an ocean birth
Seeded and silent the watery womb
Where spirals were spun on its languid loom
Where patterns were woven with warp and weft
From steaming mud vents within rocky clefts
As plankton in bloom and great swathes of krill
Created food webs that spread in the chill
From the icy depths to the shallow shores
With their fins and tails, with their shells and claws
Myriads of creatures made potency rife
And ocean blue deserts burst into life
Life
The sway of the tides in the crescent bay
That swoon to the moon in the night and day
The play of the waves in the froth and fray
As they tumble and rumble in the salty spray
On show far below is a world unknown
Where laurels of corals gleam in the gloam
Where seahorses cling and octopus hide
While the swish of bright fish shimmer and glide
With lobtails of whales and dolphins at play
While sharks in the dark are hunting down prey
Each species contributes its mosaic hue
A throng in the song of a rhapsody blue
Death
The fishing nets drag like a bulldozer’s claw
The dredge pumps suck at the fragile sea floor
Crashing and crushing, smashing and flushing
Scallops and bays, a haze of destruction
Lobsters and rays, a maze of disruption
Scraping and scuttling, gaping and gutting
To feed the world—so they say—no matter
That millions starve while the fed get fatter
Gasping and gagging, grasping and grabbing
But taking too much too fast cannot last
For curves cannot bend with no time to mend
And every boom must conclude with a bust
Rebirth
But the race to save our seas is not run
And the face of hope still turns to the sun
It’s our choice: exploit or regenerate
It’s our voice: speak up or resign to fate
If we protect, setting blue zones aside
We can expect to be turning the tide
If we restore the great mangroves of old
We can implore to be bullish and bold
When whales are back and salmon are spawning
Rewilding’s on track, and a new day’s dawning
When seas are clean and waters are teeming
We’ll recall these days of ocean dreaming
— Wayne Visser