Origins
Denver, CO
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
mother of coast was cold
and calculating at reunion,
treading silence like water.
gray clouds clogged her throat,
condensation that cloaked the fluttering
at the back right of her jaw
(a shivering seagull),
and at last came the break.
don’t you remember, she said, you came from here.
her voice washed up onto our
goosebumped ankles, stung in the places
we’d slipped and broken skin.
we had nothing to say—we,
land-bodies
and mountain-sirens
(dirt beneath our nails), splinters on our lips.
she said, what has come of the far-away things
and we told her
(a moment of pause, and her lighthouse-gaze)
told her of
the things that grew there, that lived there,
and the land on all sides,
and the grounding,
and the loving
she blinked (a falling of saltwater)
she said, better torn by water than by war
she said, don’t let them go river-hungry
and without so much as a track in sand
she receded
Reflection
Reflection
I wrote this poem as an expression of the connection I think all people should feel to the ocean, no matter how distant they are from it. It is easy for people who have been landlocked all their lives, such as myself, to overlook the impact of climate change in places far away from us, and to contribute to the waste that threatens marine life. But it is extremely important to recognize the heavy impact that the well-being of the ocean has on all human life. Climate change threatens not only to deteriorate ecosystems and eliminate wildlife, but also the sense of origin and self that is present within people in relation to such a vast presence. For this reason, I chose to characterize the “spirit” of the ocean as a mother figure; everything comes from it, and everything can be lost without it.