Osedax

You grow in the dark

In the vertebrae of a carrion-spine.

Isopod clamouring, cesspool of squid,

gape-mouthed Sleeper sharks reaping.

Past the first plateau,

Of stargazers, lanternfish, and brittle stars.

A six-gilled shark spies a shipwreck.

Bubbling past, Abyssopelagic, Blubber snow,

Your newborn god of hot-vents and sulphur springs

a baptised, capsized cetacean

Your own descending eucharist

All blubber, and body, and beast

Hadalpelagic, Holy and whole.  A sweet smelling

desert oasis.  Ballasted, Billowing, ballooning.

Your sleeping sacramental leviathan,

Hosts hagfish in Hollowed, hallowed bone.

Bleached white cathedral arcs

A frothing blue blanket, more living than dead.

In the rhythmic gnawing of crustation teeth,

The congregation comes to choir.