A Fading Melody
Hilton Head, SC
2015, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Dig your toes into the golden sheet,
Let the sun kiss the tips of your cheeks, your eyelids, your shoulders.
We watch, gaze, and stare at the mesmerizing cloak of dark plankton
Floating passively through and in-between waves.
The churning of the creamy foam possessing the grains of the sand,
Hypnotizing passerby’s as the shells nestle underneath the surface, carried from place to
place by the currents.
Hypnotizing – into vivid beauty. Beauty enough for people to crash into the waves and play
with the ripples, pressing their ears to listen,
To hear,
To sing,
With the infamous gentle, lapping melody that our souls finds solitude in.
A melody –
Hypnotizing –
What if it’s all wrong? What if it’s screaming?
It’s pleading, begging to get pulled from the suffocating abyss of plastic.
What if I told you the hypnotic, murky waters is being enveloped in the ugliness of us?
What if I shouted to you that our pleasures are capturing water, pulverizing the glimmer
into mounds of debris?
Would you listen?
The ocean gyres are circling in an endless cycle of desperation into a whirlpool of death –
Beady eyes of life sinking deeper, quicker to the gates of the end.
I need the sea,
I need the life,
I need its teaching.
Please,
Don’t take it away from me.
Reflection
I enjoyed being a part of this competition. I was originally not thrilled to hear from my science teacher that we had had to do an honors enrichment project. Last year I had done the science fair, which had been dull, dreary, and complicated for me. So, this year, I didn’t look forward to it. I searched endlessly for a competition until my science teacher brought this one to my attention. At first my first thought was, “Ocean pollution? Really?” I wasn’t psyched about it at first. But out of curiosity, I clicked on the link and it brought me to The Bow Seat website.
Reluctantly, I started to read about your competition. The first thing that had peeked my interest was the fact that I could write poetry about this issue – about science. How do you write a poem about science? I love poetry, I write stories and poems whenever i have the chance and I am a very avid reader. Usually I am not that great at science or math – sometimes I just don’t understand. My curiosity had started to rise.
The next thing I knew, I starting reading every link under the tab “inspiration,” avidly reading about ocean pollution. For the first time, the very first time, science had interested me. Not just the fact that it was science – but the fact that this was a larger issue than most people let on. I sympathized for the animals and for the life under the ocean and found myself engrossed in a determination to do something about it – even if it was writing a simple poem.
I researched for an entire day, trying to get the voice of the ocean, attempting to listen to what it might be saying. I wanted to give the issue a more creative twist, to bring it to adolescent’s attention without simply giving a presentation stating scientific facts that most teens tune out on. Using my passion for writing and my newfound interest with the ocean, I created a poem.
The entire process of doing this was no longer just because my science teacher told me too, or because it was the easiest, it was because I was genuinely interested, concerned, and impassioned by this worldwide issue. It opened my eyes to look further than what I’ve been told, what some websites on the interest say and what the news says. It helped me see beyond, and by doing this I realized that the ocean wasn’t so simple after all. I researched on my own about the subject and am now pondering the thought of training to be a marine biologist.
So I thank this competition and the website for impassioning me throughout the process, because it was worth finding a piece of who I am inside of a science project. I hope you enjoy the poem.