Ocean Dark ~ It Is This Night that I do Leap the Edge

Poetry

Dimensions

Ocean Dark

The Original Inspiration

Written a long time ago in Liverpool it remains a very popular piece, and one of my favourites.

A friend sent this image and wondered how I would see it. I sat quietly. The diver turns, looks around him, before returning calmly to the surface

Ocean Dark followed within moments.

It was a sense of pure joy. I expressed myself openly as if I were in the water, hidden, observant and awed by the ability of the diver to challenge the Ocean so dark.

I thus imagined this scene, centuries ago, long before manned flight.

Divers, young men and young women too in far-flung places, would swallow dive into the deep, dark ocean from high above on cliffs.

It is written loosely in older English. No particular reason.

It does not have the grace of the great poets because my vocabulary does not equate, nor can I write verse in the way that our poets today write… I speak of those on a level with Owen Sheers … far beyond my reach.

The poem’s subliminal theme?

Simply put, Freedom and Democracy, which I have, all my life, taken for granted, but now realise are both increasingly under threat by totalitarian and populist regimes.

The world has thousands of despots. The United Nations includes totalitarian states.

Three years ago in 2023 the greatest concern for me lay with what 340 million Americans would do in 2024.

Nothing persuaded me that the silent majority of Americans who oppose the Republican MAGA (Make America Great Again) would actually succeed in stopping what seems to be a mountain mudslide into Fascism. All reasoning and common sense had given way to a futile belief in the simplicity of the Apprentice.

That paragraph chills me now in August 2026 as I observe a Nation I have always respected and enjoyed working with, now being hollowed out.

*

The United States is the most trouble-torn nation although I have faith that Americans might, just might, in November 2026, abruptly halt their downward spiral to catastrophe. But I do not hold my breath.

And if they did, will Democrats and Republicans unite to take direct action? Or will they just pass it off as an era that they (and we the international community) can put behind us. Then in self-comfort allow themselves to make the same mistakes again.

I’m heartened that plenty of Americans are now openly challenging ‘the bubble’ as they call it that they realise they have been living in for more than a hundred years.

What shocks me most is the total absence of international history and geography. This is not addressed by television networks. Yet visit YouTube and my many American friends now find I prefer silence and that very perceptive and dissecting, clinical observation that I learned in legal practice.

YouTube channels are both embarrassing and welcoming in the same instant.

It is not their fault.

And as they come to terms with the propaganda they have been spoon-fed from kindergarten onwards, they are also confronted by the sober fact that the world neither sees them as they see themselves, nor can even be bothered to try.

But there are plenty of us who do wish them well.

They have an uphill battle.

They talk of the tyranny of King George III that led to the Revolution and the incredible foresight of the Founding Fathers in their drafting of the American Constitution. I regularly read my own rather weathered copy.

The Forty-Seventh President is doing everything possible to be that Nation’s wrecking ball. Will he succeed?

No.

Why?

History steps into the frame.

*

America! You were right to fight for independence. But do not talk of tyranny. Being taxed without representation was not tyranny. The actions of the Third Reich was tyranny. Likewise, the former Soviet Union. The actions of the present Oval Office incumbent is tyranny.

And here is where History gently touches the rudder and gives you one final opportunity to put your house in order.

By none other than the direct descendant of King George III - His Majesty King Charles III R accepting your gracious invitation to address the Combined Congress.

You rightly do not want or need any king. God fobid!

But it is right that The King gently touched the rudder of History. Everything you have sidestepped the King gently brought to the collective mind of Congress.

Senator John Ossoff has eloquently drawn a parallel to a biblical tyrant King Ahab.

Do not allow the comparison to also come into play of Belshazzar’s Feast in the Book of Daniel Chapter 5.

Let not that be the next parallel.  

That was the king who saw ‘a hand writing on the wall’ as he feasted. The outcome was grim.

I am not a religious man, but it is right and proper to learn lessons from history, including those written down four thousand years ago.

KTW 3 August 2026

OCEAN BLUE ~ MOST DARK

I

IT IS this night

That I do leap the edge

Descending through Crisp air

Jet-like…

And as if with eagle’s wings,

Roll over,

And do cast my face to the Earth,

Yet see the even crisper

Ocean Blue.

And my spirit, finding,

Eager, so eager

Do I quicken

to enter this Realm denied me.

Now this Ocean, Dark.

II

As I break the water

No splash

or even ripple,

As if a hole didst open up

Its tight diameter,

Sliding her hands,

the contours of my body

feeling.

That same first thrill

Some other hands explored me,

beyond familial.

Will my wings hold fast?

Will my sinews stay aligned?

Or will I dash upon the rocks...

This sweet creation

That my frame hath carried

These one score years and nine?

I pray You

Hath Patience

With my dallying,

For my heart crieth to the Summit

From where I didst leap,

Subjugating the greatest depths

Of Your creation.

III

In an instant

do I become a bird on air

Flying as no man doth, or will,

Except in his dreams!

For that is all man can do!

No means mechanical dost aid him;

We hath but the Sails

Blown to the Wind.

But to the Air

There is nought.

That ist Thine Domain!

You, O God, most surely

have us there.

And so it is this

that craveth my heart!

To prove to You my existence!

To challenge You!!!

IV

Swallow-like,

My arms are now beside me

In alignment,

In line of stream,

Foresooth no man hath seen afore …

And with this speed that gathereth up my soul

I plunge into the dark deep depths

of Your Soul

Darkness ~ Impenetrable

Ocean Dark

Most Dark!

Excitement!!

V

But what is this?

No icy cold as I didst fear upon my entry,

But rather, a Warmth recalled

in my mother’s womb.

And rolling round

A million bubbles releasing from me,

Buoyancy I cannot describe!

A different floating,

As if I am defying You!

But what is this that has pulled me to You?!?

VI

A trillion thoughts do fly through my head!

A thousand movements …!!

Tissue and Fibres that brace and hold.

My very frame,

elongated,

Yet in beauteous perfection.

And I see none less than Great Leviathan,

Aye!

And he dost Eye me with some bemusement!

Or is it more an awareness that

This Great Creature sees that

Which he hath never seen afore?!?

I have the better of him, for sure!

Surely now am I Jonah reincarnated!

But unlike Jonah,

I will not allow myself to be taken … no!

But now I am not so sure!

There is something within my inner being

Alertest me.

It is this.

Leviathan hath been here

… what?

A million years afore me?

How so?

We are Your Creation

Are You telling me?

That we are something lesser?

I am perturbed.

Leviathan ist clearly unperturbed.

Not for me the hot belly of a whale!

For me, it is Your sweet womb,

And in my mind’s eye

I see the chord umbilical

Stretching from You to me,

and back from me to You,

pulsating, alive, awaiting the break

The knot

Your quiet reminder

of Your Presence just a step or so beyond

… If we desire …

And thus I am saved.

And all this

because I dared!

I dared to test You!

I dared to fly

from the pinnacle,

From the roof of the world

in this great land of 

Alaska...

And thus I am rewarded!!

And surely thus,

burgeoning forth,

my Masculinity

my Beauty

my Inner Awareness of You

restored.

My frame extends.

Every part of me aligns with stream …

Again, even here,

In the depths of your Seas

The salt thrives

Cleansing me both inward and outward.

And I do now swallow-like

Shoot upward,

To break the surface

And breathe again the sweet air

With which You enjoin us.

What day this is!

That You gaveth me my wings.

What day this is

That You revisited upon me Life

… Life in abundance!

… Life to be lived!!

… Life to be celebrated!!!

I shall not, O GREAT ONE,

fail Your Benign intentions

For, by Whichever Name

You make known Yourself

Tis this I now know,

Tis good for me

‘Tis full well too

That I dost now see this!

Moreover,

As far as East is from West

Is that which lies between You and every religion

Regardless of the utterings and protestations

of men and women alike,

and bottoms raised high to the sky

I laugh.

Dost not methinks Thou wouldst be pleased

With unwelcome aromas therefrom!

Haha! Thou dost know me well.

For Tis from Thee that cometh

This tendency to see Comedy

And I dost thank Thee

For this life can, forsooth, be troublesome weary!

Ian Bradley Marshall

3 August 2026
All Rights Reserved


LIVERPOOL

© 2013 Ian Bradley Marshall

Digital Art by © IBM © KTW unless otherwise credited

“And I see Leviathan

eyeing me with some bemusement!

Or is it more an awareness that

this great creature sees that

Which he hath never seen afore?

 

Perchance, I warrant, even I 

hast ne’r seen the like of this afore

 

I have the better of him

I surely now am Jonah reincarnated

 

But unlike him

I shalt not allow myself the capture

Not for me the hot belly of a Whale”

— Ian Bradley Marshall ~ Ocean Dark