The Blobfish—‘Mr Blobby’
Pink-skinned and floppy-nosed and from the deep,
with downturned mouth and frown he seems depressed –
and decompressed! A captured, landed guest,
by pressure permanently put to sleep.
Anthropomorphic beauty’s in the eye
of those beholding, and although not cute,
the blobfish casts a spell you can’t refute
when in the depths he scalelessly swims by.
Above the ocean floor he smoothly glides
in darkness with the lanternfish and squids,
his jet black, currant eyeballs lacking lids,
while in the deepest trenches he abides.
No pageant will he ace for handsome looks,
a puppy or a kitten he is not,
and yet he’s Nature’s gift to that far spot
beneath the waves, beyond Man’s nets and hooks.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Of all the denizens of the deep, you choose to eulogize the blobfish? “Anthropomorphic beauty,” of all things, does not meet my eye, but you have opened them to another type of beauty with words that almost christen him a silent saint to be appreciated. You have demonstrated the power of poetry in presenting this previously unsung blob of a fish to our conscious mind.