A Dry Place
Bangkok, Thailand
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Heated Dust
red and thirsty
having tasted air
now scouts
for a new habitat
Crimson
swishes around
bald heads of deformed rock
twisting,
groping for
Life
from
bone tables
offering
nothing
to eat
from
dead
paper holes,
poked in by
Man’s
crimson finger
from
empty offices
filled with
bustling ghosts
on the
ocean floor.
And so,
life,
the Dust realized,
had evaporated
along with
the spirit and
the colors
of the sea,
Leaving behind
the redness of
man’s hands
hovering over
barren
lifeless
dunes.
Once again,
the Dust felt
right at home.
Reflection
Reflection
When researching about climate change’s marine effects, I learned that since the ocean absorbs 80 percent of the excessive atmospheric heat of climate change, its heated water results in coral bleaching and the migration of many marine organisms and creates the great risk of coral reef ecosystems collapsing. This, essentially, turns the coral ecosystem into underwater deserts: heated and lifeless. In this piece, I decided to capture what the ocean could look like if ocean warming was to develop further from the “Dust’s” point of view. The paradoxical effect of desert dust, characterized as red and representing heat, conveys how unnatural it is for oceans to become barren and lifeless. The diction of “bone,” “ghosts,” “paper,” and the connotational use of colors—like red representing danger and white representing death—further adds to this effect. Imagery of coral, from “hole” and “table” textures, and deserts make the audience visualize these contradictory ecosystems and make them realize how wrong this entire situation is. The figurative language and the references to “man” essentially points out that we, as a society, are contributing to this catastrophe. To reduce my carbon footprint and do my part to reverse ocean warming, I am using natural light as much as possible instead of light bulbs, biking to school instead of driving, avoiding single-use plastic, and have become a vegetarian. In order to avoid the impending doom of ocean desertification, it is crucial for us to take responsibility and reverse global warming now.