Sunday evening T

 

Another evergreen slowly changing colour. All over the city, the cedars, pines, and spruce are lightening from deep green to golden yellow. Between here and the east coast, whole forests are turning gold and then brown as the needles drop. 

 My drive home during the holidays gave me a long look at how the landscape is changing, and has changed since last year.

A Sonnet at the Edge of the Reef

By Craig Santos Perez

The Waikīkī Aquarium

We dip our hands into the outdoor reef exhibit
and touch sea cucumber and red urchin
as butterflyfish swim by. A docent explains:
once a year, after the full moon, when tides swell
to a certain height, and saltwater reaches the perfect
temperature, only then will the ocean cue coral
polyps to spawn, in synchrony, a galaxy of gametes,
which dances to the surface, fertilizes, opens,
forms larvae, roots to seafloor, and grows, generation
upon generation. At home, we read a children’s
book, The Great Barrier Reef, to our daughter
snuggling between us in bed. We don’t mention
corals bleaching, reared in labs, or frozen.
And isn’t our silence, too, a kind of shelter? 

Craig Santos Perez:

I wrote this poem after visiting the Waikiki Aquarium, where they have an outdoor, interactive reef exhibit. My daughter loved touching the water, coral, urchin, and starfish. The docent taught us about the phenomenon of coral spawning, and I will never forget the look of awe and wonder that flooded my daughter’s face. That night, we read a book about reefs. I felt sadness because I knew that corals are bleaching and struggling to survive in the Pacific. I decided to not tell her about this as a form of protection against reality, just as a reef protects a vulnerable island from a coming storm.

The poem comes from PBS in SoCal. Tw, the other poems on the page are about the 2022 California wildfires. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/earth-focus/4-poems-about-wildfire-climate-change-and-loss 

 I'm loving the cold snowy weather this week just because it feels like a throwback to normal. How are you all doing, Balkers?