Crumbling Foundation
Camarillo, CA
2019, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Every building will fall
When its foundation fails.
The humans
On the top floor,
Stuck in their endless fantasies
Of building higher and higher,
Don’t notice the strain
They inflict upon the floors beneath.
Forged from the wastes of construction,
Plastics make their way to the foundation,
Where plankton
Absorb the alien microparticles
Created from the broken-down plastics.
The shrimp on the first floor,
Through their plankton diet,
Receive these hazardous particles,
Which continue their way
Up, up, and up,
Initiating a dangerous ascension,
Till they reach their destination:
The top floor,
Back to the humans.
Throughout the building, vacancies are rampant,
Leaving the rooms unmaintained,
The walls deteriorating,
The carpet crumbling.
Should the brittle foundation
Or the few floors above
Finally collapse from the strain of the humans,
The whole skyscraper will tumble,
And the humans
Will fall with it,
Sending them
Down
To the
Ground.
Should humanity wish to keep their place
At the top of the tower,
They must run
down
the
stairs
And help the floors below
Before reaching for their aspirations above.
Reflection
For many years, I have been hearing about how humans are polluting the ocean and damaging the environment due to our vast industrial development and careless, wasteful nature. Some of the smallest parts of the oceans, plankton, are consuming the micro-particles from the broken-down plastics swept into the sea. The plankton are at the base of the ocean food web, and they are an integral part of the ocean ecosystem. Once the plastic particles are consumed by the plankton, the particles can go up through the food web, reaching shrimp, fish, many other aquatic animals, and eventually us humans. Scientists are still studying the effects of microplastics on various organisms, so it is difficult to gauge how this problem affects us. Unfortunately, due to the uncertainty of the impacts of the presence of microplastics in living organisms and the minuscule size of the plankton, many people are unaware of this pollution phenomenon. I hope that more people will realize that plastic pollution extends far beyond cases like marine animals dying from consuming large pieces of plastic waste and massive collections of trash such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch being created in the ocean. If more people understand the personally impactful effects of ocean pollution, such as the reality that a plastic bag left in the ocean could come back as micro-particles in their own food, they might become more mindful about keeping our oceans clean.