(Although, when I decide to submit certain poems to literary journals, I'll delete them first from this blog.) Today I begin with the first poem of the cycle.
Grey Whale Die Off
Mamakocha ocean vomited
160 Grey Whale corpses
onto West
Coast beaches so far this year.
The federal government is running out of space to bury the
decomposing behemoths.
Scientist claim to have no idea why they are dying.
One Port Townsend couple with beach-front property “adopts”
a whale corpse. It’s educational to watch it decompose. (Are we watching the
species decompose?) The whale’s starved belly holds only bits of plastic and
lots of eel grass, neither of which is part of their normal arctic diet. Desperation
food that does not nourish whales.
A whale expert postpones alarm. First, he questions, “Is
there any relationship to climate change? Does this link to any factors that
might affect other species as well?”
Questions that reveal cluelessness about our interconnection
on this blue-green planet rolling through the universe whose super-novad stars
constitute our bodies. Our whale bodies. Our human bodies. The sea womb of life
on this planet, the seawater red in our veins.
Our star dust bodies course seawater blood, yet we forgot
the name of our Mother.
Some stardust-seawater bodies called “human” manipulate decomposed
dinosaurs into plastic, pollution, burning belches from factory stacks, car,
truck, train, ship exhaust.
Forgetting “All Our Relations” some stardust-seawater bodies
mass-produce deforested chemical pumped cows’ farts heating the globe.
Global heating climate crisis in this cauldron of planetary
soup that is cooking us all.
Will someone please turn off the stove?
In the Salish Sea Native Americans sing and drum to killer
whale Orca cousins and their still-born babies, slipping them a ceremonial
salmon, hoping to stave off whale extinction.
Extinction Rebellion dances and sings a street closed in
front of City Hall in Portland, Oregon.
We the people declare a climate emergency now now now.
About this poem
Inspired by personal experience and the following news reports:
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