Rose Mary Boehm

https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/about-me/

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Plankter, a word that’s hardly ever used.

You’ll never find just one. Any organism

living in the water column, says Wikipedia,

and incapable of swimming

against a current

is a plankter.

Plankton.

Food supply for fish and whales.

Even sharks like them as appetizers.

In the Big-Bang scheme of things, a human

must appear quite small. Depending

on your distance, and how powerful

your binoculars are.

30,000 feet is still not high enough.

We are talking a couple of light years.

At least.

Do you see humans swim against the currents?

They gather on this side of the current barrier.

You spy some rapidly opening mouths.

By plankton’s standard, jellyfish are giants.

Still, they must stay put.

But even the ones capable

of independent movement,

the errant knights,

can’t do other than vertical.

The ‘diel vertical migration’.

Look it up.

(Relatively) young and upwardly mobile.

I heard that somewhere.

Movement determined by the surrounding

currents. Come shark, come eat.

The current trends are all there is. Even

fashionable currents in philosophy, economics,

history and other legends. Thinking in general

perhaps. But the delusion of independent movement

remains complete. Delusion, illusion…

My fellow plankters, I honor you.