In the Shallows
Chicago, IL
2019, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
in the end,
it begins the way all disasters do:
complacency and willful ignorance.
excuses that the next generation will swoop in,
or that it’s not quite a problem yet,
and we’ll stop it long before it becomes one.
in the wake of somber silence,
the reefs are emptier than ever, bleached cold into icy white.
whale bones curve on shore, a hollow echo of a gentle giant.
sand curled over and strewn haphazardly across a wasteland,
barely covering half of the arching white that reaches out of it.
time waits with bated breath
the sun does not breathe as its rays scatter in the waves’ reflections
water only ripples in the face of catastrophe half a world away
in many ways, the shoreline will become a graveyard:
for those that will die there and the plastic things that were already so dead.
we spoonfeed acid into the ocean’s body.
a carbon inferno reaches into the sky before coming for the ocean and cooking it alive
when that is said and done, the oceans are bleached stark white and devoid of life.
the water rises to rip us apart in whirlpools and tsunamis and tidal waves,
in riptides and hurricanes and screaming for help in the only way Mother Nature can.
still, the oceans burn, and so the glaciers too, fall.
the ocean drowns itself.
you do not need knives
to make the ocean bleed out.
once it begins, it will do it itself just as well.
life sapping out,
seeping through the cracks we couldn’t reach.
in this way, our silence too, will take from us.
the ocean drags us under.
(we are in the shallows now).
Reflection
When I started writing this poem, I wasn’t sure how to fit all I’d learned into words that would both illustrate the image in my head and explain why I wrote what I did. I knew what I wanted to write about: what climate change did to ocean life. I wanted the truth—stark, simple, but urgent. We are on the brink of destroying the ocean beyond recovery. I wanted that warning to come across because there is no more time to wait. This is our future, and it is now. I pieced together lines in hopes of painting an alarming picture of our equally alarming reality. After completing this piece, I’ve learned a lot about what’s happening to the ocean and what will happen if we continue on this path. Already, reefs are shrinking at an increasingly growing rate. Rising temperatures in waters, no matter how small, are causing mass bleaching events in coral. This rise in temperature is also what is leading to an increase in beached whales. The temperature is disrupting their echolocation and results in stranded whales on beaches. Many of these problems could’ve been prevented if we had started taking action earlier. Even now, it’s important to not think about slowing down the rapidly disappearing biodiversity or temperature increase, but about totally stopping it in its tracks. “In the Shallows” is a poem I hope says these things and more in a way that readers can connect with. These years will determine what our future looks like and what the next generation will know.