Unfathomable

In February 2026, along with the poet Keeks Mc, I helped facilitate the composition of a community poem for the delegates at the AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026 in Glasgow, on behalf of The Wee Retreat. The text below includes some introductory remarks and the poem as it was read out at the closing plenary session of the meeting.

Introductory remarks

"Rachel Carson said 'If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry'.

"I'm Peter, and this is Keeks. We are two Glasgow based poets and at the Wee Poetry Retreat booth in the exhibition hall all week we have been gathering contributions - words, sentences, thoughts, reflections, and even complete poems - from you guys, to include in a poem you are about to hear and a pdf booklet that will be circulated to in a few weeks time. 

"Keeks and I have blown away by the response we got from you, and I just want to thank all of you for engaging with this initiative. You have been incredible! If you don't hear your contribution in the poem Keeks is about to read it is because we have been overwhelmed with the sheer volume and quality of ideas you have submitted and there is a limit to what we can include in a four-minute performance piece. Please rest assured we will make sure we include everything in the booklet.  

"The idea that there is some distinction between poetry and science is artificial, a consequence of the contraints and intellectual straight jackets imposed on us by modern industrial capitalism. At all other times in human history science and poetry have walked hand in hand as we humans respond to the complex, beautiful world we find ourselves in, extracting meaning from ambiguous and incomplete observations, communicating our motivations and interpretations, sharing our insights and emotions. 

"If we are to be responsible stewards of this planet and its oceans, we need to do more than perform calculations. We need to embrace that holistic response that includes thoughts that may not be suitable for a poster or a paper, but would fit perfectly into a poem. It is in that spirit that we have gathered your thoughts together as best we could, and Keeks will now read the outcome of this exercise."

Unfathomable

The passage of time makes aliens of us all,

in this ocean where ancient anaerobic ancestors

were eradicated by the Great Oxygenation,

this sea topped up by three million years of rain

during the Carnian Pluvial Event,

the oceans from which all our rains are distilled.

The depths of mystery

Secrets drifting through ages

Messages without the simplistic containment of bottles

though we do not want for waste

The seas are made of time

time squandered lately as never before

Changing oceans we don't yet understand

Deep water keeping secrets

in a sea of doubts

Confidence in our stewardship lacking

however curious minds keep asking

reaching out to skim the surface

of oceans of opportunity.

Are we immersed yet?

Are we navigating our way to breakthroughs

or blindly, hopelessly lost in the abyss?

Pressure mounting, hour by hour

to interpret echoes of past and future

to break the surface into an age of harmony

and we can explore these depths.

Sitting inside a bubble of titanium

Dropping to the deepest point of the ocean

We are just an insignificant scrap in the immensity

The ocean, source of life,

can also take it from us in a split second.

We are allowed to contemplate the most intimate,

remote, legendary and extreme spot of the planet:

Mariana Trench, and discover new forms of life there

and beauty that exceeds the limits of our imagination

Diversity. Samadhi

In the magical polar blue light

today's generation of phytoplankton

seagrass and kelp

sway in a rhythm of aeons

before mixing in the sub-surface of the ocean floor

Layers tell their tales

currents carve the seabed's form

guiding how we care

over geological timescales

The infinite prism of the sea,

liquid, shifting, full of colours,

shapes and silts, rhythm, full of time itself,

connecting distant shores,

from the steel of the poles

to equatorial copper,

mixing surface and sea bed,

currents sharing their contents

linking strata across ancient epochs.

We live in a beautiful world,

and from the depths of space,

the oceans of Europa and Ganymede

swimming through the stars

in their celestial orbits

to this humble sea-clad rock,

the ocean was always within you.

My water is your water,

circulated in an inner orbit

since time began,

the first drink quenching the last thirst,

not owned, never belonging

to any one, uniting us all,

for there is a water molecule in you

that was once in the Buddha too.

We are living in a dream we choose to have.

We are each a different perspective

on that common dream,

a ray penetrating the depths

of that ocean of time,

and together we can choose a better future,

but our joy is mixed with sorrow.

Our tears run full.

In the silent bioluminescent disco of the deep,

falling in the marine snow

we find anthropogenic toxins and miscroplastics

leaving a plastocence horizon within the biogenic sediment,

evidence of the trespass of an invasive alien organism

and we discover the strangest species of all is us.

Punch

The orphaned infant ape

that finds a surrogate to cling onto

in a discarded stuffed toy: that

is what God is like to us.

No less real for being absent,

taking for us whatever form

our desperate need dictates

and random chance provides.

So what if the ritual is futile?

What matters is the belief.

(Punch was a baby macaque at Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan who was abandoned by his mother and used a stuffed toy for comfort)

Martyr

When I was alive
I hated you.

Let's face it:

you hated me too, 

but now I'm dead, 

I'm a figurehead. 

Don't pretend to care.

You'll never learn. 

I was just a weirdo

as far as you were concerned,

but now that I'm dead

you pretend you care instead.

Façade retention

I feel like I have died so many times already

and this thing you see before you right now

is the little I can remember from those lives,

the imperfect restoration of an edifice

that has suffered fire and flood, earthquake, 

insurrection, barbarian siege and sack, 

and, worst of all, the imagination of others, 

the ambition of a series of architects

who restore me according to the style and fashion

that satisfies the whim of my latest proprietor.

My cheeks blush with neon in the night. 

My forehead bears the imprint of a billboard.

Less cruel, perhaps, 

is the sincerity of the graffiti artist, 

but take down the scaffold of my smile. 

Abandon this place to ruin. 

Let it revert to rubble. 

Let it go. 

Lyman Alpha

When the photon is absorbed

an electron changes energy level, 

which is to say, beforehand,

an electron occupies one level,

and afterwards,

an electron occupies another.

Are they the same electron?

Does the electron even exist?

We look through the telescope,

observe distant stars,

record their spectra,

infer their composition,

only to draw the inevitable conclusion:

we are mud and rocks

waking from a dream of existence

into the truth of annihilation. 

But all light is resurrection,

energy absorbed, then re-emitted, 

and all matter too,

that passes through the forbidden chasm

that lies between the energy levels. 

The tears we shed yesterday

flow to the ocean, rise in the clouds

and fall in tomorrow's rain

and each dying breath is exhaled

into the common lung of the sky

to be recycled in some benediction

offered by a priest to a parishioner

struggling to understand their grief,

therefore we must ask, what died

so that this world could exist? 

Ego

Existence is something we assert:

I exist. The cogito will always fail

when thoughts infiltrate our minds

at the direction of others,

our minds hosts to parasites,

or echo without origin ad infinitum

within the sealed cavity of our skulls.

Identities are all fake, and unravel

if the smallest, otherwise unnoticed thread

is given the slightest tug, and we regress 

to infantile, pre-verbal demands,

no longer equipped to negotiate their satisfaction

with any degree of nuance or sophistication,

all names now administrative,

recorded on certificates lodged in archives

ablaze with the passage of time,

consumed utterly until nothing remains, 

identity as damnation. Nevertheless, 

we exist, not as a conclusion

rendered up in some volume of philosophy

to be cherry picked and misconstrued 

if not forgotten entirely, 

but as an assertion, a demand, 

entirely unreasonable, never fully satisfied,

that feels the pang of an unendurable hunger

while it shirks the burden of essence,

slips the madhouse straps

to govern the asylum as a neglected empire

in which the illusion of order

may spontaneously arise from time to time

but which is ruled by impulse and appetite.

This absent existence that dwells on detail

according to caprice and whim

all while its kingdom crumbles

is nevertheless bound by a law, 

a single law that it will obey

to prevent stupidity and selfishness

turning it into instruments of evil:

insignificance, in whose arms we may rest, 

whose embrace will crush us if we resist. 

There is no moral calculus

that will not eventually betray us. 

There is no deal we can do

that secures a greater good. 

We are only saved by our insignificance, 

and I raise my ego 

only so I may stand before it

and I reject all your philosophies

that would rob me of this autochthony.

Ultimatum

If I'm either with you or against you

then I'm against you, always, obviously.

If we have to agree about everything

I refuse to agree with you about anything. 

Your purity makes me want to be dirty. 

I listen, as you calmly explain,

as you explain in that way

that makes you seem the very paragon

of calmness, why it's me that's wrong, 

why I simply don't understand, 

what I simply fail to appreciate, 

and at last, at last, I am finally persuaded,

the penny drops, and the realisation dawns, 

that even if your gang, your reasonable gang

of entirely reasonable gangsters

was the only gang left on Earth,

my last chance to join up with someone,

anyone, I'd rather perish alone in the desert,

to starve, than sign on to your fine words, 

your fine thug words, your tongue tribe,

the compelling, irrefutable logic of your words

that only a deranged lunatic would reject.

I reject them. Condemn me. I don't care. 

See you in the next life 

when it's your turn to be wrong.