The Perseverance of the Sunset Sea
Miami, FL
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
My mind, a weightless mangrove island,
my breath and heartbeat, slow as tides,
breaking to the beat of the sea on the shore.
My mortal chains the mangrove roots,
or bladderwrack, or a school of piranhas,
nipping away at my all-too-human flesh.
The sunset sea fills with me,
red blood tinting restless waves,
the water trailing moss and seaweed,
possessing me.
Bring me beyond reality
—but a river does not exist ever since
the steel beams, scorched trees, money green—
sail past this fumed life,
from groves of asphalt to raging ocean surf:
she runs through my blood,
racing against the pastures
and white heron angels
and the endless spray of spray of spray
from my fingertips, out like a wildflower.
I, moored to the fate of foam,
white caps, ascending souls
with salted blood and skin of sand and
immaculate reflections calling me home;
I see the bone-dry prairies sink
through blue lips, my old flesh and blood
on the horizon, like flotsam,
bobbing in the lub-dub cast-off relic ocean;
I take the intertidal filth as an omen,
lungs filling like bubbles with aqua slog,
kissed by the water and the sapphire sirens
and the ghosts that lie in the sea,
swallowed and licked like a dog,
gleaming saline.
I, the sunset sea, thermocline and oxygen,
a cauterized flame of toxic waste,
a rolling swell, a ravenous restoration;
I, the sunset sea, endlessly.
Reflection
Reflection
As someone who lives in Miami, Florida, it is immensely sad to see how the poor conditions we humans have forced upon the earth will someday lead to my home being lost to the growing ocean. This poem follows a blending of self and the ocean, a symbol for abandoning the habits of mine that contributed to climate change and realising that the well-being of the sea directly impacts my own. The sea will outlive us all, and can become a threat to us humans if we continue to hurt it with our pollution and damaging practices. The sea is ultimately the thing that will persevere, not us; therefore, it’s important to realise that our only hope for salvation is viewing ourselves as one with the earth and seeing its health as our own. I wanted to explore through metaphor my connection to the sea and how I am reflected in it, its fate being tied to mine in a sense, both hurt by the actions of humanity. It ends with a complete submersion of myself to the sea, paralleling the eventual sinking of my actual home in Miami, and sees the ocean restoring itself at the expense of those who have both hurt it and disregarded or even forgotten about its power, displaying the enduring nature of the earth and how dangerous that may be to humans if we do not help her (the earth) heal.