Dancing on the Clouds
San Jose, CA
2022, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
isn’t it lovely to walk all the upside downs?
to wish upon a shooting star,
a bluefish tuna flying to escape the metallic clasps
of ghost nets, the grasps of our bloodied hands—
the same hands that points fingers and blames
for setting fire upon a blue world we all share,
the same hands of five-year-old
who collects bottle caps from the stomachs of seabirds
like catching stars in a jar,
who lays down on the clouds and gets drunk
on the sea and
names algal blooms because
isn’t it lovely to walk all the upside downs?
that one’s Alberto, a big fuzzy sheep with a long top hat and…
can you see the acid mine drainages
bleeding into the horizon,
a beautiful and cruel copper sunset painted
on nature’s canvas with our manmade brush?
that one’s Emelia, a giraffe whose neck is too long and…
can you see the nano-plastics
falling from the sky like snow,
but open your mouth to catch a snowflake
and you’ll taste blood on your tongue?
that one… that one? that one looks like a seahorse in the middle of a sneeze!
can you see the oil spills
seeping through the atmosphere,
engulfing the planet we live on
in a black,
iridescent milky way?
that one looks like two people. holding hands.
you and me.
can you see it?
isn’t it beautiful to walk
all the upside downs?
Reflection
Reflection
I asked myself, “How would the innocence and naivety of a child approach such a heavy subject of climate change, to see a world of polluted black and brown in rose-tinted glasses?” It breaks my heart to see how so many people realize the gravity of climate change but view it as something so far away from them—something they are unable to change. Through clashing the voices of a child versus the cruel, bitter reality, I wanted to show that climate change is something we are living through now. It is as real as the voices of children in the poem. And by interweaving fleeting glimpses inside the eyes of childhood wonder, I wanted to emphasize the message that we’re saving us. We’re not saving the Earth; the Earth doesn’t need saving. It has endured for billions of years and will continue to endure for billions more. We are saving life. We are saving the animals who are having their homes torn apart, who are dying from suffocation because they can’t breathe through all the plastic. We are saving the children who can now count all the stars in the sky with only one hand, who will have never seen river dolphins except in science textbooks and fairy tales. We are saving us. I wanted to end this poem with a question, a bittersweet note almost with a hint of guilt and wonder-struck trance of mockery: how can we turn a blind eye to climate change? How can we so easily destroy, burn, eradicate our world to ashes?