The Tale of Two Titans
Orange, CA
2017, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
She moves with the wind, the rain, and the moon.
She shifts and she shudders with rhythm and tune.
Her beauty is captivating, enchanting, imbibing.
Few have ever known the secrets she’s hiding.
As ominous as an onyx, as beautiful as a jewel,
Her presence is vital; Her punishments cruel.
She is ubiquitous, omniscient, as old as time.
The things She has seen: extinctions and crime.
He is new, arriving, impending, and striving.
He innovates and populates; Growing and thriving.
He has families and friends; children and kin.
His time on this Earth: The size of a pin.
His cities enormous, massive, gigantic.
His tendencies peculiar and truly quite antic.
But to fuel him, yes, that is a whole other worry.
For He requires more than what is found in a quarry.
He yearns for oil, natural gas, and coal.
They provide for His heat, His life, and His soul.
His greed knows no bounds, no limits, no line,
He is plagued by something He shall not define.
Whether by ignorance, apathy, or desperate measure,
He continues to pollute, as if he takes pleasure.
From oil He makes plastic, from mines He creates acid,
He destroys and degrades, no matter how placid.
“Does He know? Can He tell?” She screams, cringing in pain,
“My children, my animals! They die in vain!”
The plastics, the cans, they float through the water.
The lives they end; The happiness they slaughter.
Patches of garbage He’d helped to create
Lay waste to Her body in its morbid state.
She cries for help, but few have listened.
She struggles for aid, lying hopeless and sickened.
She watches a turtle, once majestic and proud,
Get choked by a shopping bag, like a deadly shroud.
She writhes in anguish as she sees The Great Reef.
It withers and dies; She chokes on her grief.
She looks to the Gulf, poisoned with black tar.
She looks to the East, with her mouth ajar.
He leaves nets in Her water, trapping the whales.
He dumps waste into Her oceans. Her effort fails.
She shouts from the Equator to the Arctic Shelf,
“What have you done, you fool? You’ve killed yourself!”
Alas, He refuses to attest to what He’s done.
To Him, the journey has only just begun!
Her beauty fades as each year ticks by.
She is forced into damnation; She is left to die.
Reflection
Reflection
As an avid SCUBA Diver, the beauty and elegance of the ocean has enchanted me for years. It’s omnipresence, its vast expanses, and its seemingly endless strength have compelled me ever since I was a child. Yet, I never saw the oceans in a conventional way. They were never just giant bodies of water trapped in the endless cycle of the tides. They were human. She was human. The ocean is the mother of all life, the birthplace of all species, the starting line of evolution. I wanted to convey to the reader what I had believed the ocean to be ever since I was a little boy, to the first time I strapped a tank to my back and decided to discover the beauty of a reef first-hand: Our Mother, the mother that we all share. I sincerely hope that through reading this poem, I can shift perspectives from self-interest to the common interest. The public need not believe in what I believe. They do not need to be convinced that we stem from the ocean, or that our very, very first home was in the sea rather than on the land. I just need them to believe that the ocean is a vital piece of our livelihoods that we all share, regardless of political, religious, or ethical beliefs. That, alone, may save our Mother.