wings, bones, and flickering life
Scarsdale, NY
2020, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
if our ancestors had wings, they would have flown where we now swim,
gossamer feathers flapping where tanned limbs now wade through the sea.
if we had wings, they’d be viscous and dark, clouded with tar and reeking
of industrial-grade oil, seeping from churning hunks of metal, slick black puddles
rising to the top and capping the sea in a layer of despair.
now we sail through water that was once dry land. the ocean
has reclaimed what was once our home
with melted ice that was once the home of someone else.
up north the polar bears scrabble for land, their caverns of ice
thawing and drifting away to lap at our beaches,
the ground beneath their feet falling into liquid
to cover our sand and drown what was once ours, what might’ve still been ours
if we had been content with what we had.
we have turned the ocean into a graveyard, and now it is coming to turn us into ghosts,
yearning to erode our skeletons, our bleached white bones like the colors we stole from the sea,
the homes we destroyed, the ecosystems
that were once full of life.
from the watery depths, our lost past, our bleak future,
their vanishing present, it calls to us,
with the voices of sirens, heightened by the waves of the vengeful sea.
the ocean is hurting, the way a mother mourns at the death of a thousand children,
and the ocean is rising, salty waves breaking seawalls
to reach those who murdered her life.
but we are not ready to be destroyed. as a species
we reach out to placate the vengeful ocean, singing
with words that’ll never reach her ears, dancing
with actions that we hope she sees. today,
we do not solely mourn the bones that were once ours;
today, we shed tears over the corpses of the creatures,
and we push towards a path free of oil, free of tar, free of the gases that weather away the glaciers
the way the ocean weathered away the bones of our ancestors. tomorrow,
we will shatter the greenhouse that traps fumes of death near our planet, and tomorrow,
we will walk a path lined with oyster shells and life, thriving ecosystems in micro and macro,
and one day, the ocean will recede, relinquishing its claim on our ancestors.
and on that day, the polar bears will walk where they once could only swim,
and on that day, the ocean will hear our regrets and apologies,
and she may heed us, too, and she may let go of her vengeance.
on that day, we will fly again with wings of gossamer clean feathers,
and we will soar through skies and waters in a world in which we are not alone,
a world in which there is still life, and light, and fertile earth, and shining seas.
we will turn the ocean back into a home, and the ocean will give us all life.
Reflection
My poem was inspired by the symbiotic relationship between the ocean and humanity. While I was researching and brainstorming for this piece, I saw so many connections and parallels between what we are doing to the ocean and what the ocean is doing to us in turn. Currently, the ocean waters are rising, breaking our seawalls and reclaiming so much of our coastal land. The weather is becoming increasingly bizarre and strange, and I kept thinking about all the land that the ocean has risen over, the land that we once lived on but is now inhabitable. I thought about the homes that were once there, the people who lived there, and I thought about how the water that now covers those lands came from the glaciers and ice caps in the poles, the same places that so many animals, such as the polar bears, counted on to survive. The parallel between the negative effects humanity is inflicting on the ocean and so many of the creatures in it, compared to the effects we're now experiencing as a result of that, just seemed very interesting to me, and I really wanted to write about it. As I was writing this poem, I felt a lot of things coming together in the perfect way so I could really understand and internalize all of these complicated concepts and bring them to life in my writing in a new and creative way.