Mother Ocean
Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I am like a mother
Bountiful and pure of spirit
Willing to give more than I should
But expecting nothing in return
Because for me, the happiness and safety of my loved ones
Is all that matters
But the times of joy are diminishing
Replaced by the stinging taste of death, decay and fear
The alien objects that come to pass us
Are unbeknownst to my realm
Shiny and new yet deceiving to the eye
When newcomers arrive we scurry away but they are everlasting and everywhere
My salty tears cannot disintegrate their tough skin
With each passing day we are attacked by more and more of these aliens
We call them the silent killers
Always lurking, always waiting, like a trap
We try to fight them off but our slippery skin and fins were not made to fend off such creatures
Not many of us survive
And the few that do are hurt and left with scars
Ones I cannot heal
I feel useless
I should be able to protect those I love
But Instead I am left powerless
My children are dying and with them a small piece of me dies
I plead
Hear my cry
And the cries of my beloved children
Unlike the aliens we are not silent
Yet it seems you are deaf
For our pleads are unheard
So listen harder
When my hair laps up against your toes by the shore
Listen
To the millions of hearts pulsing within me
Eager to live the life I bestowed upon them
The life you are taking away from innocent creatures that haven’t had the freedom to do as they wish
Instead, incarcerated in a jail with no bars and security guards
But the greedy fingers of death
Which have taken away too many of my children who haven’t even seen the brilliance of the sun
And the eerie serenity of the moon
So I plead
Not to the sun
Not to the moon and the stars
But to YOU creatures of the Earth
To help your brothers and your sisters
You took advantage of my generosity
This time you took much more that I could give
And now I ask that you give my children what you and your alien objects stole
Repay the destruction and havoc you caused
In my once peaceful realm
My salty tears are infinite
But the precious lives that I hold are not
The precious lives that are now in your hands
Reflection
Reflection
My poem was inspired by what is happening in my own community. I live in a small community besides Lake Ontario. My family and I often go down and take walks or go biking along the shore trails and I find it so saddening to see the amount of garbage and plastic debris littering the ground and even being carried by the waves. The lake is a smaller scale example of what is happening to the ocean but I found that it helped me become more aware and inspired about the issue. I have come to realize what a delicate ecosystem the ocean is and how humans are threatening it by doing something as careless and thoughtless as throwing our garbage out.
I was inspired to write my poem in the perspective of a mother because I felt that this would be an interesting way to portray the ocean by giving it feelings and emotions. This personification allows readers to really understand the message that I am trying to get across because it is much more relatable. I also thought that the pain of a mother would be much more vivid and painful than that of anyone else because of how strong the bond between mothers and their children is.