Waterdread Malady
Newark, DE
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Many again, the steady lave of stillness. Soft—
not agitated; a routine lullaby I
imagine our mother hums every night.
But now: wizened salt on my palms,
brittle seashell cupped against my ear.
The beach near the harbor
twitches like a dead animal. Stripped
of life limb by limb, skin severed without
symmetry. Say
decomposition is natural.
Yet even an amateur doctor
can discern internal damage.
I hear the children in her womb—
warm, but not towards their future.
Oysters, throat ripped of pearls;
coral, pallid as forgotten corpses;
seafish, beautiful bodies sullied under
stress. High tide—
smoke-infested lungs—
over-heated forehead—
call it High tide, an acute sickness;
the rise and fall of corporal cycles;
an attraction, attractive.
Repeat it: High tide, high tide, high —
High time instead now lost,
somewhere,
for us all.
At dawn, it’s quiet.
I hear my brothers and sisters—
living off of scraps they tell me I left behind.
People tell me broken seashells
are beautiful. Like
oil-slicken waters, trash-lined
ocean floors— the wrong and
whorling coma of
many maladies; my
mother, my mother.
Reflection
In my piece, I touch upon the collective destruction of the ocean. All aspects of the natural world are interconnected—coral bleaching leads to habitat loss, which causes species death, and the cascade continues; as is the same for rising sea temperatures and levels. So with the magnitude and multitude of blatantly conspicuous signs of our ailing planet, I am hurt and angered that there are still adamant denials of climate change. Exploring this topic, I have learned combating the issue is a shared battle. It takes many voices to convince the powerful ones. I write to leave mine behind, as well as convince or strengthen several others. The ocean—the world—is a beautiful place; it provides a robust ecosystem that sustains our own, but in itself also deserves great respect for its autonomy. So there we must leave it: undisturbed. Perhaps reversal of climate change is a reasonable start.