Ocean Soup and the Garden of Live Flowers:

In the "undisturbed waters" of offshore South East North Carolina: This photo was taken by Julep Gillman-Bryan. She has not been able to get round to posting her work; so I'm taking on the task. This a Macro photo shot of small, sessile marine invertebrates called Telestos. In our waters, they are a commonly observed sub-family of soft octocorals. The stems are coloured red to orange and in my observations, do not extend more than 60-80 mm above the substrate. The polyps give the appearance of bright white flowers with a spread of 20-30 mm This picture is an example of colonial stems with individual polyps emerging to spread their eight tentacles into the current and capture passing, small, organisms for a meal. If threatened the polyps withdraw into the stem. They can be found in groupings from a single colony a few sq. cm in area or massed in an area several metres square. I'm uncertain as to what their range of depth is. I've observed them a depths from 16m/50ft to 35m/115ft. They seem tolerant of colder water temps to 10C/50F.

Waving in the currents in a spellbinding dance of life and sustenance. Such animals are bits of the whole, not only linked together as a biological unit but in the natural churning and cycling that maintains the mutual health of the whole ocean...for them...and us.

A poem by Hafiz from the book ‘The Subject Tonight Is Love’, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.

The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

Into my heart and upon
my skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

“Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloveds Divine
Game

O, in the Beloved’s
Wonderful
Game