Salty (Notevember 2022, #17)

One would think ‘large’ and ‘elusive’
Are mutually exclusive
But ‘largely elusive’ implies ‘somewhat known’
Told, more often than shown
Imagined, embellished, countless rumours sown
Everyone with a version of their own
Crafting a rare gem out of plain aquamarine.
How the giant could remain unseen
Boggles the mind
But we do often find ourselves blind
To the obvious, the things right in front of our noses
Having been fed with it in continual, small doses
But when a rebel voice proposes
That there is an elephant in the room
(Or an abyssal giant in the salty gloom)
It’s taken as fact
Except, of course, by a rare few who react
With indignation and condemnation
To think, on such an occasion
That one should have the nerve
To speak out loud what has so long been observed.
But unlike the elephant, about which we know much
There is an otherworldly touch
To such a creature as dwells in the vast blue
It lends itself not to one path, but two
Freak of nature or figment of fiction
Easily slipping into a depiction
Of a candle-girded pentacle
Run through by ten terrifying tentacles
But maritime monsters and eldritch gods
Hardly fit with what we know of cephalopods
And so far there has been no sign
That this intelligence is malign.
If I may speculate:
Considering what humanity has done of late
One has to wonder if remaining hid
Doesn’t speak to the wisdom of the squid.