“Their brains are showing, Mommy!”
declared the child of the crowned jellyfish,
dozens of them, undulating ghostlike
in a tall cylindrical tank.
I saw her expression through the glass
from the other side, where I stood
entranced by their graceful movements,
patterned flashes of fine hairs along their flanks
like a sequence of blinking lights.
And yes, a cluster of muscle-like bulbs
pulsing beneath their spiky crowns.
She’d exclaimed neither in judgement
nor disgust, but in honest amazement,
as if struck by the novel possibility of it.
Imagine if all our brains disrobed
before the eyes of the world. If we danced
in milky fluid, unashamed. Simple,
elegant, social beings. Hats off,
nothing to hide.