So much depended
on this black
and white body
now limp, borne
on her mother’s head
or carried
in her mouth
through rough seas.
“. . . orcas are on the knife’s edge of
extinction due to a variety of factors:
pollution, boat strikes, and, most of
all, a depletion of Chinook salmon,
orcas’ main food source.”
This mother will not allow
her daughter’s body to sink
out of sight
beneath the Salish Sea,
but carries it
the way any mother
would wear her grief—
on her own body,
like a scar.
As she swims,
she sings a deathsong
bigger than one small being.
“They’re at the very top of the food
chain in the Salish Sea, and if they’re
starving, if their bodies are so
toxic they have to be treated as
hazardous waste when they die,
something’s really wrong with
our ecosystem.”
She mourns:
her child’s body
is her voice.
She wants us to see
what we’ve done.
— Deborah Miranda
*She has been carrying her baby for 16 days at the time of this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment