Requiem for the Shallows
Sarasota, FL
2020, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
there is an island called Tangier, sinking in the Chesapeake Bay
they wrote a book about it. second word in the title: Requiem…
as if the bay had disappeared Tangier already.
southward: my Florida, surrounded by water, surrounded by keys.
I lived on a brown canal and saw the bottom, saw
the beer bottles bolstering the sandbar at high tide,
remaining from low tide. thrown off the side of a boat
to hit a snook (the poor sod) on his head.
like a comic book onomatopoeia—bonk!
well, at least they didn’t heave the Styrofoam cooler.
I caught a catfish: age 8 and my father whispered
take out the hook. this one still wants to live.
he told me to look in its eyes and throw it back
into the water with a name, for names give life
to the living. my brother caught a trout: age 12,
and I took the hook out for him. look
in his eyes. he still wants to live.
we wore sea glass around our necks…
pearls on special occasions.
the bathroom smelled like the beach, looked
gimmicky like a house for sale or a vacation rental
we wore sea glass as we drudged through canal silt
for worms and minnows. wore it as we cast our lines,
hoping for a snapper we could cook for dinner.
my father drank Corona Lite.
unwrapped the labels and threw the bottles
off the dock.
maybe that bottle will float to Mexico.
the sandbar caught it, or one of the islands in the Little Bay.
cans and bottles and Snowy Egrets, stepping lightly like dancers.
the islands here are succumbing to layers of cans
and bottles and aluminum foil. the birds want white bread, they
are no longer afraid of the red-faced tourists.
oh, but they don’t know better.
of course, they don’t know better. sugar mills that grip
the other half of the economy don’t know better.
they keep their business when the nitrogen runoff they dump
kills everything but algae from here to Crystal River. from
here to Charlotte Harbor. when the tourists flee
because the smell of death hovers over our city of glass
for months and miles up the coast.
Karenia brevis, my pungent friend. you stole
my dinner. we wear sea glass as we vote
for our governor, our city councilmen.
smooth minty green around our ankles as we twirl them
just beneath the ripples atop a brown canal.
I caught a sheepshead: age 17. I looked
and saw my own exhaustion mirrored in its eyes.
I watched a manatee at the edge of a dock, watched
as he snorted at me, asking for lettuce. and I pretended
not to look at the white railroad tracks up and down his back.
drift away, old man. there is nothing for you here
they write a Requiem for a vanishing village
because it’s the people who are threatened; the crabs
that sustain them would be just fine.
and who will write the Requiem for Sarasota Bay?
who will mourn those expired millions when the algae
blooms red? like throwing out canned sardines.
who will dust off their binoculars when
the sea-glass-city rises so far above the ocean that
the plastic swirling in the waves looks like colorful tricks of the light.
ha! an inch for a mile. I did not free those fish only for them to die
by the hand of some careless, some faceless entity
that ruins the water and silences the bay. no more bubbles
or begging for bread. just beer bottles sinking through the waves
towards the sandy bottom, where they will stay for one million years,
breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, but never disappearing.
we will have sea glass longer than we will have dolphins and tuna.
so why not be a siren, who no man can deny. why not sing
elegies for the birds and the sand. my father whispers,
you must write an ode instead.
Works Cited
SWIFT, EARL. CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island. HARPERCOLLINS, 2020.
Reflection
Reflection
I have lived my entire life on the west coast of Florida. We rely on the ocean, and we must live harmoniously with it in order to survive. I grew up on the water, which instilled in me a great love and respect for it. I have seen the ocean in many forms, from calm on a bright sunny day to surging black with the force of a hurricane. The ocean is present in much of what I write. To me it is a symbol of something that is never-ending; something that will outlive us all. So when I sat down to write about its fragility, I could only think of the parts of the water that humanity touches. When you grow up on a boat or a beach, you are taught from a very young age about the power that the ocean’s currents have to carry you away. I respect the ocean as something great and powerful, and thus it is all the more disheartening that something so awe-inspiring can be brought to its metaphorical knees by humans who create more trash than should even be possible. I write because I care, and I care because I believe that we must respect the planet in order to survive at all.