Coral reefs
Builders of underwater cathedrals,
Coral reefs temples,
Sacred space,
I salute you.
You the little polyps and zoozantella,
The master architects,
Building over and over your predecessors,
For millions of years,
Not loosing focus.
The kingdom of the reef came down four times,
To extinction in it's 2 billion years history,
But always came back,
With more vitality, more diversity, more shapes and forms,
More vibrance than ever before,
Radiance,
A look at you and one is transformed,
Chocked by beauty, estetic arrest,
Gardens of sculptures,
Deep valleys incrusted with a thousand colored stars and coral flowers,
Ametist purple, turquoise blues, rubi reds, yellow saphir,
In perfect estetic harmony,
Musical colored symphonies,
Masterpieces after masterpieces,
A infinite treasure chest of wonder.
Entering this oceanic cities,
With rush hours, regular feeding times,
The one that munch all the time,
The night feeders, cleaners, street "sea cumcumber" vaccum cleaners,
Like shoe shiners, or hairdresser, cleaner wrasses take one customer after the next,
Often entering mouth of sharp teeth that could devore them,
2 octopus dancing, transforming in front of your eyes in texture, form and colors,
A herd of grazing parrot fish move by, sound of crunch,
The cementing algae,
Keeping the limestone together,
Sponge covered walls and crevasses, interior decoration,
The citizen of the coral reef city,
Often exuberent,
Multicolored, multi designed appearances, parade, flashing their costumes to the World,
The wildest fashion show on earth,
One think one has landed in paradise,
A world of perfect harmony.
But life is fierce on the reef,
Competitive, ruthless.
Each little polyp tentacles, armed with batteries of stinging cells,
All carnivores, designed to seize animal preys,
Feeding on everything passing over them,
Some use chemical warfare to kill and destroy invaders,
Some poisons to paralize their prey before devoring them,
The scorpion fish rely on camouflage,
Motionless, most of the time,
Suddenly at the speed of light strikes,
Only to resume his posture like nothing ever happened,
Mass invasions treathens every one,
When armies of the coral enemie #1 acanthaster planci alias crown of thorns march on,
Night and day sucking live flesh of the corals colonies,
Leaving fields of dead skeletons.
Plagues of diseases decimate entire species,
Black band diseases, viruses,
Infections,
Thermo changes, the coral bleaching, often dying,
The reef rely on a eternal dance of life and death,
As soon as it is created that forces try to destroy it,
Typhoons, ripping reefs apart,
Then the little polyps and zoozanthella,
Come in to rebuild.
And soon the reef takes shape again,
An endless circle that worked until.....
The baddest of them all decided to mess with the biological rythm ,
The cosmic tempo,
Destroying faster than all typhoon and crown of thorn and plagues combined,
Chemical waste, dinamite, poisons like cyanides,
Keeping a few reef fish in a tank for private entertainement,
Scooping everything alive for miles and miles,
Genocide of life,
None theless the little polyps and zoozanthella,
Keep on building,
Repairing,
Erecting their cathedrals, temples and monuments,
Never giving up.
In that spirit,
They will probably outlast man,
Keeping building and rebuilding long after the virus created the virus that exterminated them.
Builders of underwater cathedrals,
Coral reefs temples,
Sacred space,
I salute you.
You the little polyps and zoozantella,
The master architects,
Building over and over your predecessors,
For millions of years,
Not loosing focus.
The kingdom of the reef came down four times,
To extinction in it's 2 billion years history,
But always came back,
With more vitality, more diversity, more shapes and forms,
More vibrance than ever before,
Radiance,
A look at you and one is transformed,
Chocked by beauty, estetic arrest,
Gardens of sculptures,
Deep valleys incrusted with a thousand colored stars and coral flowers,
Ametist purple, turquoise blues, rubi reds, yellow saphir,
In perfect estetic harmony,
Musical colored symphonies,
Masterpieces after masterpieces,
A infinite treasure chest of wonder.
Entering this oceanic cities,
With rush hours, regular feeding times,
The one that munch all the time,
The night feeders, cleaners, street "sea cumcumber" vaccum cleaners,
Like shoe shiners, or hairdresser, cleaner wrasses take one customer after the next,
Often entering mouth of sharp teeth that could devore them,
2 octopus dancing, transforming in front of your eyes in texture, form and colors,
A herd of grazing parrot fish move by, sound of crunch,
The cementing algae,
Keeping the limestone together,
Sponge covered walls and crevasses, interior decoration,
The citizen of the coral reef city,
Often exuberent,
Multicolored, multi designed appearances, parade, flashing their costumes to the World,
The wildest fashion show on earth,
One think one has landed in paradise,
A world of perfect harmony.
But life is fierce on the reef,
Competitive, ruthless.
Each little polyp tentacles, armed with batteries of stinging cells,
All carnivores, designed to seize animal preys,
Feeding on everything passing over them,
Some use chemical warfare to kill and destroy invaders,
Some poisons to paralize their prey before devoring them,
The scorpion fish rely on camouflage,
Motionless, most of the time,
Suddenly at the speed of light strikes,
Only to resume his posture like nothing ever happened,
Mass invasions treathens every one,
When armies of the coral enemie #1 acanthaster planci alias crown of thorns march on,
Night and day sucking live flesh of the corals colonies,
Leaving fields of dead skeletons.
Plagues of diseases decimate entire species,
Black band diseases, viruses,
Infections,
Thermo changes, the coral bleaching, often dying,
The reef rely on a eternal dance of life and death,
As soon as it is created that forces try to destroy it,
Typhoons, ripping reefs apart,
Then the little polyps and zoozanthella,
Come in to rebuild.
And soon the reef takes shape again,
An endless circle that worked until.....
The baddest of them all decided to mess with the biological rythm ,
The cosmic tempo,
Destroying faster than all typhoon and crown of thorn and plagues combined,
Chemical waste, dinamite, poisons like cyanides,
Keeping a few reef fish in a tank for private entertainement,
Scooping everything alive for miles and miles,
Genocide of life,
None theless the little polyps and zoozanthella,
Keep on building,
Repairing,
Erecting their cathedrals, temples and monuments,
Never giving up.
In that spirit,
They will probably outlast man,
Keeping building and rebuilding long after the virus created the virus that exterminated them.