Anthology: Cutting Our Ties to Pollution
West Chicago, IL
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Do your sunglasses blind you?
Do your sunglasses blind you?
Do your sunglasses blind you to all the trash left on this beach?
The plastic buckets forgotten
by those kids happily making a sandcastle?
The water bottle carelessly thrown aside
By a man late for his appointment?
The cigarette dropped in a hurry
when a call was received that the basement had flooded?
And the tennis ball that’s been rotting in the sand,
Left behind after a game of fetch?
This pollution is not harmless,
it affects the creatures who inhabit
The beach,
The ocean,
And the sky.
We must open our ears to hear what may be their final cry.
They cry for help, for comfort, and at the very least,
Not to be choked by all this plastic left here on the beach.
Do not let your sunglasses blind you to the problem
Right at your feet
That crab you see crawling
May be dead of eating plastic by the end of next week.
A POEM DEDICATED TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE OCEAN
THE OCEAN WAS CERULEAN BLUE.
FISH ROAMED FREELY WITH NO FEAR OF
POLLUTION.
SUBLIME.
THE OCEAN’S BLUE IS MURKIER.
FISH ROAM, BUT CAUTIOUSLY, FOR FEAR OF
POLLUTION.
SCARY.
WILL WE RESTORE THE OCEAN’S BLUE?
WILL WE EASE THE FEARS OF FISH BY FIXING
POLLUTION?
YOUR MOVE.
Fishing for Bottles
Grandpa took me fishing yesterday.
I caught a few bottles, two dolls, even a flip flop.
It’s not as exciting as it used to be.
I once caught a fish you know.
I mean, it was dead,
But I still caught it.
He says he’ll take me fishing again sometime soon.
I think he’s faking it,
Faking that he still enjoys fishing,
Faking that he still has enthusiasm about it.
You can see how he used to feel about it though,
You can see it in his eyes when he shares his stories,
The ones he tells over and over again,
Of the fish he would catch,
Sleek, with scales of silver and green, “Feet long,” he says.
His eyes fill with nostalgia when he talks about that.
He must be tired of it now.
Now that he can only fish for bottles.
Mermaids
My little sister told me she was glad
That mermaids didn’t exist.
(That’s strange for a third grader.)
She said in science class they learned about plastic pollution
And how humans were killing “loads and loads” of fish
And that would happen to mermaids, if they existed.
But I told her if they existed they could teach us
How best to fix it,
and to raise awareness saying
it was collecting in their cities,
Catching on their tails,
And landing in their food
Because some people don’t think pollution is a big problem.
(“Why not?” “I don’t know.”)
And maybe then the plastic would go away
And the ocean would be beautiful, like it once was.
I think I made her day.
IMAGINE
CLOSE YOUR EYES.
IMAGINE THE COLD OF WATER LAPPING AT YOUR FEET
GRITTY SAND BETWEEN YOUR TOES
SALT IN THE AIR
SEAGULLS SQUAWKING PEOPLE CHATTERING.
NOW IMAGINE A VOICE OVER THE P.A. SAYING,
“THANK YOU FOR VISITING OUR EXHIBIT, EXPERIENCING THE PAST: OCEANS.
THE NEXT TOUR WILL BEGIN IN 15 MINUTES.”
THOSE FEELINGS?
THAT SMELL?
THOSE SOUNDS?
FAKE, CREATED FOR THE EXHIBIT BUT THAT VOICE?
REAL, BECAUSE THAT VOICE,
IS THE VOICE OF THE FUTURE.
Reflection
Reflection
I write poetry because I love expressing myself and creating feelings and stories that other people can experience and interpret. I decided to write this collection of poems because I believe in teaching others and showing them that they can make a positive impact on the world. My overall goal with these poems is to encourage people to be active in the process of fixing plastic pollution.
I chose to create an anthology because I found it important to emphasize the many aspects of pollution, including both the reality of it and the potential future reality of it. I used different fonts for the poems to enhance the tone of each and add to the experience of the reader. When writing this anthology, my main focus was to highlight the reality of pollution being such a pertinent problem that the future could be deeply affected by it.
I often find myself not paying attention to problems that aren’t seemingly important. But upon neglecting them, the problems are even harder to fix. This anthology is a cry to the reader, communicating that there is a choice to bring a stop to pollution, and a warning, showing what will happen if pollution is not brought to a stop.