Neptune
Great Falls, VA
2017, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I thought, I am king of the watery world
Where the merpeople live without sin
And the alga grow tall, like the Redwood trees
And they forgo their feet for a fin
Not too long ago, when the big ships first came
Bellies swollen with gold and tin instruments,
The conquering sword, the bow, and the hook
Yet still, those were good times, without vigilance.
The squid sang their folklore, the echo in caverns
Where the light cannot seek or destroy
Ghostly their dissonance, hallowed these caverns
And I sat, and I listened in joy
But different are times, now the whales are all gone
With the skin of their bellies all flayed
The blubber shows through where the hooks catch the bone
“For profit” I hear sailor say.
Anemone caught with bottle cap snares
Murals grey where they wine from a pipe
The dolphins I bandage, with rips from my cloak
I stow away plastic each night
The sunset still glimmers and catches her skin
With the organs beneath left to mold
And I thought I had salvaged the very last pearl
But its glitter was oil and not gold
Every Monday I separate otters from bags
And on Tuesdays I pluck forks out of seals
I pet shrimp as they die from vanilla scent sea
And I recharge my electric eels
I am fine, as I look on my kingdom from here
My vantage on top of a stone
My animals dead, and my wonders polluted
Shedding tears as I sit here alone
Reflection
Reflection
I authored “Neptune” for a very specific purpose: to humanize the ocean. When we talk about marine pollution, we often run into the trap of talking about it impersonally, like it is not a problem that affects us. But ever since I went vegan, I’ve really looked at the way I interact with and commodify the environment. Human debris clogging our oceans is not the problem of some distant impersonal moon-controlled tide; it is the suffering of marine animals and the degradation of the very earth that we should love. “Neptune” personifies the ocean and its sadness, because when we humanize the ocean we will care more about preserving it. There is so much of the world we haven’t discovered, and 90% of that remaining frontier is in the ocean. Through art, I hope to realize the beauty of the environment in language, so that people who read my poetry will be able to share that emotion with me.