I Lost My Keys to #1, 3, 5, and 6
Coral Springs, FL
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Every day we get closer and closer,
To the silent tsunami,
To the flooding of tears of our own device,
To the time where we will wash away life,
The Great Baptism of the modern century,
The new religion, the new flood.
And yes we will lose our little boxes on the hillside,
We will lose our country clubs,
Our Walmarts,
But I don’t care,
Because we will lose more important things.
There is only one Gumbo Limbo that we have,
There is only one overlook into the deep Sawgrass,
There is only one Tall Cypress park, and it is dying,
The cookie-cutters already have swallowed it, the boxes are flooding,
But still, can we live without Tall Cypress and Gumbo Limbo and the Sawgrass?
Can we live without the beaches we have, the swamps, the ugly beauty?
What will we do when there is nowhere to escape the fumes?
Nowhere to get bitten by a mosquito,
Nowhere to fight with family,
Nowhere to see a swamp,
See a marsh,
No sweat,
No love.
I wonder how long we can live without nature,
How long until we realize Thoreau was right,
That America was wrong, that we were wrong,
That we are wrong, and will always be wrong,
And plead for forgiveness,
Not just to the universe,
Not just to the earth,
Not just to the sea,
But to ourselves.
For we sin when we steal Gumbo Limbo,
When we devour Tall Cypress,
When we flood the Sawgrass,
For when all of it is gone,
Washed away in the Great Baptism,
When we are unable to mourn,
When there will be no great outpour of grief,
No funeral for the death of the sea and its shore,
There will be a great hardening of our hearts.
And we will cease to care,
And we here will forget Gumbo Limbo, and Tall Cypress, and the Sawgrass,
And we will forget all of the millions of Gumbo Limos across the world,
The Gumbo Limbos in Indiana, in Kentucky, in New York City,
In Europe and in Africa and in Asia and in the Americas,
And all the world will forget beauty and injustice and fairness,
And the world will become stubbornly satiated with the miseries of life,
For in these places there is truth and awakening,
In nature there is truth and awakening.
If we want to drown the world, fine, go ahead,
But you drown the truth in doing so.
Reflection
Reflection
I live in South Florida, a land laden with suburbs and gentrification. There are several nature reserves that reflect the pre-suburban environment in my nearby town, though they are small and often surrounded by suburban housing. Climate change and rising sea levels not only threatens these natural areas, but the entire state itself. Most people are more concerned with the destruction of their suburbs rather than the destruction of the environment. Many do not understand how integral natural areas are to the human spirit. Since the 1830s, American philosophers have agreed that nature opens up the mind, relieves people of stress, provides creativity, and improves happiness and relaxation. Humans need an escape from industrialized society in order to retain critical thinking and individuality. Floridians are at great risk of losing these spiritual places because of rising sea levels. Eventually, the entire state can be swallowed up. But these coastal ecosystems are not just unique to Florida. These places of escape and humanism exist across the entire globe. With climate change, we lose our homes, we harm the local wildlife, and we destroy the outlets of creativity and comfort that are necessary to humanity and that only nature can provide. In my local school’s student government, I have aided the Environmental Concern committee in school-wide projects to promote environmental consciousness, and hope to continue and improve my efforts on that behalf.