Thursday 14 October 2021

Clio of the Depths

I have cast off weight to glide,
lost light in the undersky.
Where my cousins plod,
I rainbow arc,
backlit swiftness,
sleek among the butterflies.

Close to grace, I open,
lotus-like,
a fine fruit,
toothsome,
its bruised flesh threshed
by my winnowing maw.

Gorged, I sheathe my
glass scimitars, and
weave into darkness,
seeking further sweetness.


This piece was written in October 2017, from an Allographic workshop about animal poetry with Robin Lamboll. Sea Angels are, essentially, marine snails that ditched their shells a long time ago to glide through the water with their "wings". (Well, sort of – read the Wikipedia article for more details...)

Look out for this and its Lesser Spotted friends in Spectral next year!

digital drawing of a sea angel - a translucent creature against a very dark blue background with an ovoid body and a set of six tentacle-like appendages curving out from around the centre of its head like particularly aggressive stamens. It has two disproportionately small, pointed "wings" either side of its neck which greatly resemble the collar of Doctor Strange's cloak. The creature is backlit so that all its edges glow, ranging from a mostly bluish body and wings, an orange bottom, and a yellow head. the tentacles range from very pale yellow to dark orange in colour. You know the creatures from the first season of Stranger Things? A bit like that. There is a faint signature in pale blue which reads "Fay Roberts".
I enjoyed drawing this - the first time I've used colours since I started drawing last year. Source image by Alexander Semenov.