A Jelly Wandered

An email that starts out, "Dear Poet..." is bound to make anyone shudder. But I braved my way past the greeting to find that the email was informing me that I was one of the winners of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's jellyfish poetry contest, set up to promote this weekend's World Oceans Day event.

I expect the celebration will include a parade through Monterey, a key to the city, a vacation home on the Carmel beach, and an honorary position as the town's Poet Laureate.

Here's the winning poem (and here's a different piece that I opted to not submit):

A Jelly Wandered

A jelly wandered far from home
And drifted through the sea
In search of great adventure
And the joy of being free.

Tumbling through the waves and diving
Down onto the floor,
He soared through beds of coral and
He only wanted more.

Twirling, swirling, parasol
Of luminescent white,
He journeyed through the ocean
Full of calm and without fright.

For though the others teased him
For the brain he hadn’t got,
He had a mind all of his own,
And spineless he was not.