Tenderness Of Anemones Poem by Rory Hudson

Tenderness of anemones
at the bottom of the sea -
a tenderness that’s deep and wide
reaching out to you and me.

Exploratory caresses
of tentacles coloured bright
in mysterious depths of water
that to us are dark as night,

enticing multicoloured fishes
to an improbable demise
as they discover that the tenderness
of the tentacles hid lies;

lies of love and beauty
that always generate more,
lies, deceiving the unwary
as to the future that’s in store;

baubles of deception
in a pseudo-paradise
in a scheme of nature reaching
throughout sea and earth and skies.

In their schools of great unknowing,
the little fish swim to their fate,
and if they learn of the deception
they learn of it too late.

Through millennia they die this way,
and yet they never learn;
again and again, to false, caressing
tentacles they turn.

And in this way the world revolves,
the chain of life sustained -
life that dies and re-evolves,
destiny thus ordained.

But from tragic scenes I turn away,
I do not wish to know;
though I set down my thoughts in words,
my heart wants it not so.

I turn my face towards the beauteous
enticements of desire,
even as my life burns down to nought
in its consuming fire.