after “The Kraken” by Tennyson

“LONDON (19 May 2026) — Scientists have discovered 1,121 marine species in a single year, marking a significant step forward in efforts to document life in the world’s oceans. From the ‘Ghost Shark’ Chimaera [among the most mysterious inhabitants of the deep ocean], to symbiotic worms on volcanic seamounts in Japan [this polychaete worm makes its home inside a ‘glass castle’: the intricate chambers of a glass sponge, a creature with a skeleton made of crystalline silica], the findings uncover a complex array of life beneath the ocean surface.”

— from the Ocean Census

for Ali (1974-2025)

What mysteries dwell in abysmal deeps?
Far, far beneath dreamless seas nothing sleeps,
Nothing sees, and the one secret the seeker seeks
Breeds a mystery only darkness keeps.
A boundless and bottomless abyss
Where alone the Kraken might exist,
Bioluminous in fathomless depths
Unslumbering with bubbling breaths,
Hidden by glass-sponge skeletons alive
With seaworms, while the ghost shark of argent
Pearlescence with its emerald green eyes
Illumes the Godless deep and in silence glides —
Never to the surface the living light can rise,
For all its light and life in darkness lives
And all its unknown death in darkness dies.

[Clay Franklin Johnson is the author of A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems (Gothic Keats Press, 2021). His collection’s eponymous poem was presented at “Ill met by moonlight”: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realms in literature and culture, a conference organized by the Open Graves, Open Minds Project (OGOM) with the University of Hertfordshire. In December 2024, Clay’s poem “The Faery Wood” won the Highly Commended Award, one of two prizes given for the Brian Nisbet Poetry Award in Huntly, Scotland. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Elgin Award, received Honorable Mention in The Best Horror of the Year, and has appeared in publications such as Nightingale & Sparrow, The Fairy Tale Magazine, Ghost Orchid Press, Eternal Haunted Summer, Abyss & Apex, Gramarye, and the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS), among others. Some of his writing recently appeared in Fairies: A Companion (2025), published by Peter Lang Oxford. Find out more on his website at www.clayfjohnson.com, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @ClayFJohnson.]