Who will study the oceans when we are gone?

[KonradS]

These new cams can record the opening and closing of the south pacific clams
we categorize them according to hereditary clans
their rich kingdom is snuggly crammed
into the remnants of last century's greatest crash.
Do you know it?

It left these bones on the ocean floor
children, mothers, crass sailors who drank one cup too many
now cured of their worries, eternally done for
their strung out fascias donned by ocean life, femurs—
infrastructure for the coral, a surfboard for a crab.

That one there, he hammed it up on a pectoral girdle
riding the waves that curl like the mane of a mare
he has never seen, because he's a prawn
and not a man, one from a mass
but each one just as capable
of mashing the eyesockets of dead captains in.

Next to the first officer's remains
is a lass and a heavy ma'dam, whose loose head
still nods with the beathing of currents
none can interfere with the gentle sway
of her person, the pram
which her white-knuckled fear still grasps
after 50 odd years.

One still can recognize the recession in their clothes
from the calcium content
in their graying bones
prone to brittle flaking
when they are prodded by passing eels
with their slinking bodies, pure esses
they can straighten to rods, electrified rams
running into the ruins of
what we once called humanity.

Their runes are forgotten now
like their worries, their pains, their scared eyes
watching as the water washed over the deck
as their sham of a captain jumped over board
as some snored, others snorted all the uppers they had left
the weather vane spun and spun and spun
snared by the fickleness of an oncoming death.