Return to the Sea

Written by Wade R. DeYoung

For my daughter, Caitlin Raeann

Sing, O Muse. Sing how sea brought life to Earth
And Siren song gave plants and creatures birth.
Blood is seawater; we carry our past,
As redwoods harbor algae chloroplast.
Mosasaurs majestic, plesiosaurs
Placid, return to sea like commodores
To a bedraggled security quilt,
As King Poseidon, God of the sea, lilts
To manatees, whale sharks, battleship keels,
Ions, electrolytes, mollusks, and eels.
Amphitrite, Queen of mermaids, naiads,
More missiles and starfish than the sky has.
More birds—penguins, pelicans, sea gulls,
Sea stars, and rays than Heaven above culls.
All strike the Siren sea-depths chord of life
Aquatic, of salty water and strife.
Of comrades slain and the pirate’s pearl knife,
Of nights of sin with the skipper’s curved wife.
Drink to foam and brine and constellations
And sea-snakes serpentine. Sing to nations
Naval, to sea slugs snug as bathtub plugs.
Hum an ocean shanty and an aside
For Octopus occupied with gard’n wide.
Sharks tiger, mako, hammerhead, great white;
Mariner’s rime, and nautilus delight.
Pisces dances among the stars heav’nly
And sings of cerulean sea gently.
Sea is resurrection and life lasting,
Baptism’s sacrament and fish fasting.
Wrecks Hesperus and Edmund Fitzgerald,
Fishes scale battles mighty and herald
Hippocampi and typhoons turbulent,
Angel fish with angel eyes emergent.
Squid, sailors, Salamis, Bismarck, and Hood,
Rhythm, rhyme, chimes crustacean on beach wood.
Sperm strive through water and mucous saline,
As admirals sound death knells submarine.
The sea is life, and the sea sings of death.
All return to the sea with final breath.

Other Works by Wade R. DeYoung Published by
Diagonals Literary Festival

Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus

About the Author

Wade R. DeYoung was born and raised in Michigan. After 28 years, he retired from the U.S. Army as a captain and served as an aircraft armament mechanic, a recruiter, an environmental science officer, and an entomologist. He has a B.A. in English (creative writing track) from the University of Central Florida (2025), an M.S. in public health (medical zoology track) from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (2015), and a B.S. in zoology from Michigan State University (1991). He has written numerous poems, short stories, and one novel. His poems have been published in 100subtexts, Fae Corps Inc Newsletter, Bewildering Stories, Children, Churches and Daddies (Scars Publications), and Diagonals Literary Festival.