Quotes and Poems: Day 38

Quote:

"Turn your wounds into wisdom." — Oprah Winfrey

Poem:

Praise Song for Oceania

BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

for World Oceans Day

". . . as if there is a path where beings truly meet,

as if I am rounding the human corners."

—Linda Hogan, "The Turtle Watchers" (2008)

~

praise your capacity for birth

fluid currents and trenchant darkness

praise our briny beginning

source of every breath

~

praise your capacity for renewal

ascent into clouds and descent into rain

praise your underground aquifers

rivers and lakes, ice sheets and glaciers

praise your watersheds and hydrologic cycles

~

praise your capacity to endure

the violation of those who map you aqua nullius

who claim dominion over you

who pillage and divide your body

into latitudes and longitudes

who scar your middle passages

~

praise your capacity to survive

our trawling boats breaching

your open wounds and taking

from your collapsing

depths

~

praise your capacity to dilute

our heavy metals and greenhouse gases

sewage and radioactive waste

pollutants and plastics

~

praise your capacity to bury

our shipwrecks and ruined cities

praise your watery grave

human reef of bones

~

praise your capacity to remember

your library of drowned stories

museum of lost treasures

your vast archive of desire

~

praise your tidalectics

your migrant routes

and submarine roots

~

praise your capacity to smother

whales and fish and wash them ashore

to save them from our cruelty

to show us what we're no longer allowed to take

to starve us like your corals starved and bleached

liquid lungs choked of oxygen

~

praise your capacity to forgive

please forgive our territorial hands and acidic breath

please forgive our nuclear arms and naval bodies

please forgive our concrete dams and cabling veins

please forgive our deafening sonar and lustful tourisms

please forgiven our invasive drilling and deep sea mining

please forgive our extractions and trespasses

~

praise your capacity for mercy

please let my grandpa catch just one more fish

please make it stop raining soon

please make it rain soon

please spare our fragile farms and fruit trees

please spare our low-lying island and atolls

please spare our coastal villages and cities

please let us cross safely to a land without war

~

praise your capacity for healing

praise your cleansing rituals

praise your holy baptisms

~

please protect our daughter

when she swims in your currents

~

praise your halcyon nests

praise your pacific stillness

praise your breathless calm

~

praise your capacity for hope

praise your rainbow warrior and peace boat

praise your hokule'a and sea shepherd

praise your arctic sunrise and freedom flotillas

praise your nuclear free and independent pacific movement

praise your marine stewardship councils and sustainable fisheries

praise your radical seafarers and native navigators

praise your sacred water walkers

praise your activist kayaks and traditional canoes

praise your ocean conservancies and surfrider foundations

praise your aquanauts and hydrolabs

praise your Ocean Cleanup and Google Oceans

praise your whale hunting and shark finning bans

praise your sanctuaries and no take zones

praise your pharmacopeia of new antibiotics

praise your #oceanoptimism and Ocean Elders

praise your wave and tidal energy

praise your blue humanities

~

praise your capacity for echolocation

praise our names for you that translate

into creation stories and song maps

tasi : kai : tai : moana nui : vasa :

tahi : lik : wai tui : wonsolwara

~

praise your capacity for communion

praise our common heritage

praise our pathway and promise to each other

praise our most powerful metaphor

praise your vision of belonging

praise our endless saga

praise your blue planet

one world ocean

praise our trans-oceanic

past present future flowing

through our blood