Reaching Out
Harrisburg, PA
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
As I sit on the sand,
a wave splashes into me,
like it has a hundred times before.
But this time, something different happens.
The water reaches out,
and grabs me.
The drops act like fingers,
wrapping themselves around my legs,
trying to pull me into the great sea.
“Stop! What are you doing?” I cry.
There is no answer,
but the wave lets go and retreats into the ocean.
I sit in disbelief.
What was the wave doing?
Was she trying to play with me,
or tell me something?
Or was she trying to drown me?
While sitting there thinking,
I’m again startled by the sudden grip of the wave.
But this time, she speaks:
“Come with me, please. I need your help.”
“I can’t.”
She understands,
and solemnly trickles back into the sea.
Guilt washes over me,
as I would like to help her,
but I cannot breathe underwater.
This mysterious wave in distress
has surely captured my attention.
My thoughts are interrupted
by something hitting my foot.
It is the wave again,
but this time she is holding something:
a bottle.
“What is this?” I ask.
“This is yours, you left it here the last time.”
“I…I’m so sorry…I didn’t know…you were…alive.”
“Of course I am alive, can’t you tell?
With every breath, my tide rolls onto the sand.
With every blink, darkness settles.
With every smile, the sun rises.
With every laugh, thunder claps.
And when I cry, rain falls on the world.
Dolphins play on my surface,
turtles feed in my reefs,
and sharks prowl my depths.
I am very much alive,
which is very fortunate for you,
because if I was not,
you would not be either.”
I can do nothing but sit quietly,
with memories flooding into my head;
memories of all the times I left garbage on the beach.
It finally hits me that the ocean is like our mother,
and we thank her by filling her with trash.
She leaves the bottle at my feet, retreating once more.
“Wait, don’t go! I want to help you!”
“If you really want to help me, you can’t do it alone.”
She disappears, but I know she will be back.
“Everybody!” I yell, “Come here! I need your help!”
People slowly walk up to me, curious.
“We are going to save the ocean.”
The wave roars back onto the sand,
but when I turn around to look,
I am shocked.
For miles up and down the beach, the water is filled—
filled with plastic,
without an inch of water showing.
I drop to my knees and begin to cry.
“Have we done this to you?” I bawl.
“My dear, this is just the beginning.
There’s more plastic in me than every beach can hold.
But there’s no point in crying about it now.
We can’t change the past.”
And with that, we put on our gloves and begin.
Reflection
Reflection
My name is Aidan Bodeo-Lomicky, and I am a 16-year-old boy from Pennsylvania. I first became interested in marine conservation when I was 10 years old, when I learned about the vaquita porpoise, the world’s most endangered marine mammal. I immediately felt compelled to help, but as a young kid, I didn’t know how I could really make a difference. I started a blog, http://vlogvaquita.com, and since then, I have become a board member of the only organization dedicated to the conservation of the vaquita, written and illustrated a book about the species, and became the president of a non-profit organization dedicated to marine conservation. In those years, I learned the true impact that artwork can have on people, and how valuable a tool it can be for conservationists. My website started as a way for me to share my poetry, and it blossomed into a vehicle for me to directly educate thousands of people every day about a marine conservation emergency. Possibly the biggest threat facing the ocean is plastic pollution, and I really wanted to create a poem that wasn’t just a recital of pollution facts and statistics. I wanted to create a story that created genuine emotions from the readers by anthropomorphizing the ocean. The ocean truly is alive, the heartbeat of our planet, if you will, and we are practically suffocating her with toxins, noise, and plastic pollution. I hope my poem evokes certain emotions from readers that spur them into action.