Echoes Beneath the Waves
Panorama City, CA
2025, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
The ocean is not silent–
it speaks in breathless undertows,
in the hush between crashing waves,
in the aching sigh of the tides returning
to shores wore thin by our forgetting.
Beneath our waters, time sleeps.
Ancient songs curl in the deep,
the echoes of creation
drifting through whale bones and sunken ships
it’s memory–salted,
swallowed, and waiting
We call it vast.
We call it blue.
But we do not call it a witness.
We do not ask
what it has seen:
the warming,
the bleeding reefs,
the plastic ghosts of our convenience.
However, it still feeds us.
It forgives us more than it should.
But forgiveness is not forever.
To know the ocean
is to know yourself–
fragile and fluid,
deep beyond understanding,
and yet always tethered
to every choice made on dry land.
Listen:
Not just with your ears,
but with the part of you
that can feel the other’s hunger,
another’s pleading.
Awareness is not just a sight–
but a responsibility.
The moment you see,
is something you must never turn away.
So ask the ocean
what it remembers–
and ask yourself
what future you will leave
is what will be told.
Reflection
Reflection
I came up with this idea in the first place since not many people in our community appreciate or fully understand the threats that we are causing to our own home, Earth. I used what I knew about the problems and other issues that are caused to help create the flow of my piece to help others grasp the true mindset of our Oceans. What truly inspired me were mostly based on the documentaries I watched that were recommended to me by my teacher since I enjoyed swimming and marine life in general. And I had discovered the real truth, a harsh one of what we are doing to our bodies of water. This feeling that I got is also what really pushed me to create this piece, to spread the word of our worsening planet. What I wish to tell to any readers is that we still have time to fix ourselves. Not fix ourselves outwardly, but inwardly. Our wrong-doings and how any effort makes a change. How true freedom always carries restraint and true awareness is not a passive sight. That we must enjoy the beauty and life that we were given on this planet and pass it down. That even though we may be delicate have the power and strength to help shape our world through choice. And how the ocean always remembers and will never keep silent until we don't turn away from it's calling.