Water of Life
Meriden, CT
2018, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
The water at high tide
Sways on the shore with every breath
And like the intricate mind
Not a soul knows its depth
Yet with each breath it suffocates
Pollution crowds each lung
It’s voice is softened every day
Til no more songs are sung
The poisons fill the body
The life is stripped away
Death approaches fast
With each unchanging day
With a stomach full of trash
It starves until it dies
It can be saved
But no soul even tries
Its death takes the lives of all
Earth becomes the new Mars
What once thrived with abundant life
Is dead among the stars
Nothing can bring its soul back now
All attempts are far too late
Because all people allowed it to die
We all suffer its fate
We had the chance to let it live
If we had listened to its cry
Yet since we chose to ignore it
Now we will also die
But this future has not come
In this moment it’s still alive
And we have the chance to change
So that it may fully thrive
The ocean lives like us
And there is so much that we can do
We need to treat it better
Because if it dies, we die, too
Reflection
Reflection
This poem is about the ocean and the life it holds, along with the path of destruction we humans are leading it down. My poem shows the ocean as a person, slowly dying from the poison we throw in it. As pollution fills the water, life is pushed out and dies. Eventually, I speak about the death of the ocean, which leads to the death of the world, and all who lives in it. The ocean’s life correlates with human life, and I attempt to portray that in my poem. I call Earth the “new Mars" because of how Mars is theorized to have had life, but then died and became the empty planet it is today. I am trying to state that Earth will become dead like Mars if we allow the ocean to die. In the last few lines, I explain how there is still hope for us humans to pick a different path for the ocean to allow it to live. Lastly, I state how our life depends on the ocean’s life, emphasizing its importance.