Transplant
Denver, CO
2020, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
From above the skin of the sea,
one may not at first see the skeletons.
There was a city here, once, in a sense.
Color of ochre and opal and sun-kissed tangerine
with the people all bustling and moving
in crowds of iridescent fins.
Was the empire one that fell, or faded?
I do not know whether they felt it
when the life was drained from their world,
the corals sucked bone-dry
even amidst the water that once was life,
whether it was an armageddon foretold,
like how we craft our own prophecies from years
and rising numbers, or if it seemed sudden, a
presence followed by the cold breath
of absence.
Either way, the streets
are filled with ash.
If this is Pompeii, what gods did we think ourselves to
let Vesuvius spill over? There used to be beauty here,
abundance, now torn down in the face of deification’s
unbearable heat, leaving nothing but the fossils of a
ruined civilization.
But this is not only a city; it is a body.
It is one that may still and grow pale in sickness
but give it medicine, and it will
return to vibrancy; give it time,
and it will heal; give it a heart,
and it will thrive.
Works Cited
Chasing Coral. Directed by Jeff Orlowski. Exposure Labs, 2017.
Warne, Kennedy, and Michaela Skovranova. “Can New Science Save Dying Coral Reefs?” New Science Could Save Dying Coral Reefs, in the Great Barrier Reef and Beyond, 29 Nov. 2018, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/great-barrier-reef-restoration-transplanting-corals/#close.
Reflection
Reflection
My poem is intended to explore one of the many detrimental effects of rising ocean temperatures: coral bleaching. I first heard about this phenomenon from a documentary in my marine biology class, and I was immediately struck by the tragic poeticism of it. As a result of human actions, entire coral reefs can be drained of their color and vibrancy, thus impacting vast amounts of marine life. But what I found even more poetic was one of the ways in which people are looking to solve this problem—coral transplants—which, in phrasing alone, likens a reef to a body. This idea stuck with me, and gave me hope that we as humans can learn to see the ocean and other ecosystems as we see ourselves: as living systems worthy of not only living, but thriving.