Some Jelly Fish Are Immortal

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
November 2024

A new poem by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

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Some Jelly Fish Are Immortal

Some jelly fish are immortal
the professor said, as he talked of
driftwood and dolls heads, gannet skulls, sea
glass, centripetal and centrifugal forces,
aspects of the new materialism, and all the picturesque detritus the tide delivers,
as it deposits what we've done to the world,
between the high and low water mark.
This has a
name of its own in Shetlandic.
A language no one now speaks,
unless they learned it from books,
which is how one learns other tongues;
rather than at the breast,
should that be
how you learned this one.

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