The Ocean Odyssey
Danville, CA
2017, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
It has been ten years since.
The adventure has ended.
I am ready to recollect
a long and difficult journey home.
It had begun smoothly enough.
But little did we know,
we would soon encounter
the greatest monsters fishkind would ever face.
We’d been making good progress ―
there was a current to guide us along
and the route ahead looked clear ―
but the eyes can deceive.
I saw floating plastic
and swam through oil,
I saw others of my kind
deformed by nuclear waste,
I saw sewage
and swam through acid,
I saw others of my kind
killed by invasive species,
I saw dolphins and whales
who said that there was no more food.
Their once-sharp senses became dulled
by big hulking lumps of metal.
I returned home alone.
The school had been lost.
And I saw the horrors of the journey
once more again.
Reflection
Reflection
I found my inspiration through Homer’s famous epic poem, The Odyssey , in which the Greek hero Odysseus tries to sail his way back home along with his fleet after the war in Troy, and encounters all sorts of terrifying monsters and beasts that try to prevent him from returning home. As a result, he returns home alone ten years later, his men all killed in the encounters, and discovers turmoil back home, where he doesn’t recognize the once peaceful and beautiful home that he once had. Through a free-verse poem, I tried to capture a parody of this famous poem, and incorporate its aspects into what is now a current issue in our world today. I used these aspects as an ongoing metaphor throughout the poem, comparing the fantastical monsters with the monsters that are polluting the ocean today - marine debris, plastic, oil spills, nuclear waste, sewage waste, acidification, invasive species, and noise pollution. These are “the greatest monsters that fishkind would ever face”. The final metaphor compares the turmoil that Odysseus faced when he returned back home to the horrors that the narrator faced when he finally returned home. As he returned home, he saw what he had encountered on his journey plaguing his own home, and realizes that this is the reality.