A GHOST IN THE FOREST

The ghost in the forest hypothesis states that if you remove an organism from an ecosystem, it will affect other organisms that relied on that organism for their survival. The area where this organism once inhabited will act as a dead zone. The diversity in species will be greatly reduced.
–Dr. Rose-Marie Muzikastates

I woke two o’clock in the afternoon
an 81 degree day,
the sky sullen blue with Hiroshima clouds in the distance

and a ghost in the oil,
the water blood red.
Did you really believe God is at the end of the world?

Brown pelican, fresh water dolphin, manatee, blue finned tuna,
shrimp, oyster, alligator, clam.
I saw a man ray,
the stench of the seven indecencies spread across the beach in
eagle spans, herpes clusters, the bitter taste of arsenic

and the bone littered sand full of crabs,
a sudden lack of salt,
the sunset of the Keys dripping body organs, vomit, green mucous

Is this not enough? The great deforestation,
raw sewage and drinking water,
how fingernails blacken at the fall.

The man ray was enormous,
grand shadow black fins that stretched and stretched like a yawn,
and then I saw its small head, tiny eyes, huge teeth.

Close to shore where the greedy own the water,
near the boats and the no trespasser signs,
a second man ray joined the first

and the family of swimmers
laughing, tossing a beach ball, perfect blond hair and nothing
one moment and the next, no longer there.

One of the man rays winked–I swear it did–
bragged with a Dante sound and bloodied fangs
and then it too was gone.

What is it you cannot hear?

– Michael H. Brownstein

Burning Flood

    April 22, 2010
      Earth Day USA

Flames leap from an oil rig
in the gulf coast. Another
eleven workers dead.
Scattered reports filled with
those lies called statistics.

But this time something is different.
We are being strangled.

An ugly snake comes closer closer
spewing slimy debris. Trapping us
in coils of filth. Day after day creeping
closer closer showing its greasy face.

Was it only yesterday when
we felt breezes brushing our hair?
When we tasted the sweet saltiness
of our beautiful sea? Our eyes
resting on green, blue waters,

What happened to our world?
Blur of seascape, haze of time.
Where are we? Where can we go?
Our hearts are caged in fear.
We can not hide. The sun…an
eye without pity glares down on us.

Today we found fragile
dragonflies pinned to oily reeds.
Dragonflies never to take flight.

Pray tomorrow will have promise.
Pray morning light turns from grey to gold.
Blessed be blue
blessed be our blue sky
blessed be our blue ocean.

– Joan McNerney

Squall Lines

The oil spill insinuates itself
into everything, even
my mother’s hospital room,
when the nurse, watching the news
as she hangs another bag of saline
to float the antibiotics, says:

My husband’s a crabber.

He’s gonna have to find himself
another job.

She’s young & I wonder if
she understands.

It’s not just some job
he could up and quit,
no more than she could
trade motherhood
for a stripper’s pole.
He stands as few still do
in the long progression
of his daddy’s trade.
His ancestors sat &
mended their nets
as the first missionary
told them stories
of a briny Dead Sea
worked by God’s own son.

He has studied
with the fervor of a preacher,
the psalms & gospels of the water,
the concordance of wind & waves
the way it all fits together, until
he can plunge fearlessly
into the wet mystery of it
& snatch back baskets full
of monstrous & succulent crabs.

Will his skin taste the same to her
when it’s lost that extra tang of salt
& his eyes are distant clouds
on the horizon?
Will she be able to read
the squall assembling
in that vacant air?

– Mark Folse

spoils

slap slap slap
of the soup
sliding its slimy self
onto shore
a seaweed salad
over-dosed
in balsamic
shiny at the surface
slick-toxic
lurks under
neath
gasps and glugs
as pools plugged
with gunk
another live one
sunk
the dirge-pipe
of a gull
lulls us all
senseless

– Kat Mortenson

Slick

Some birds’ beauty
comes from iridescence –
the play of light revealing
changing colours buried
in black feathers.

Don’t be misled.

Any bird that swims
the rainbows
of this congealed sea
will find not beauty

but death.

– Juliet Wilson

Gulf Coast Flyways

Point on the map to nineteen eighty-eight
when I sat on the roof of your Thunderbird
parked aside a rice field somewhere
along the backside of Galveston Bay.
Clap your hands, you said, and my palms
wreaked havoc along that Gulf Coast flyway
as a white flurry of water birds
shot skyward against green grain
enveloped by ultramarine.
Point on the map to twenty ten
when I hovered before my computer
unhinged, sobbing over an image
of an egret, splayed and rotted
on a beach along that road
between Galveston and Biloxi.
Blue sky vainly vied for reflection
in blood-colored water.
My hands folded into silent wings
that mimicked a flight
for that bird’s soul.
Hard life happened along that highway
between nineteen eighty-eight and twenty ten.
I totaled your Thunderbird,
you totaled your integrity,
I moved to another state, twice,
you married a yoga instructor.
And then there were storms,
real storms, like Andrew, Katrina and Rita,
constant pressures that convinced me
this concrete would crack under the onslaught
unless I held that plaster together
with my own two hands.
And now, the oil.
Oh, I’ll never be an angel,
a white bird flying over rice fields
along Gulf Coast flyways.
But I can learn lessons,
and I still have my palms, and I use them
to evoke spirits to rise to great heights,
to embrace shadows of life after life,
to let go of something for a reason,
and to paint a memory that is so surreal
that even you may remember me.

–Linda Goin

a british petroleum found pantoum

look     it’s obvious to everybody that they didn’t have a plan
in the scenarios     fish and birds escape serious harm
beaches remain pristine
water quality is only a temporary problem

in the scenarios     fish and birds escape serious harm
we are greatly disappointed that oil has made landfall
water quality is only a temporary problem
the situation we are dealing with is clearly complex

we are greatly disappointed that oil has made landfall
the junk shot is going to work
the situation we are dealing with is clearly complex
the mud kill shot is going to work

the junk shot is going to work
the on-the-fly planning continues
the mud kill shot is going to work
beaches     were supposed to be safe

the on-the-fly planning continues
beaches remain pristine
beaches     were supposed to be safe
look     it’s obvious to everybody that they didn’t have a plan

This is a found poem; the source is AP Impact: BP spill response plans severely flawed — 6/9/10

– Angie Werren

For Our Sins

In the hills of West Virginia
we thirst for living water,

so we go on Sundays
at morning and at night,

and on Wednesdays, too,
we go, looking for a well

that isn’t poisoned by
the runoff of our sins.

Someone said the Gulf
where fishes used to leap

is sacred, dead sea water,
but with men holed up

inside the mountain
gasping like the fleeing fish,

we can’t imagine baptizing
ourselves in oil and gas and brine.

So we settle for a sprinkle
from polluted heaven’s springs

and mourn the lost that failed to flee
these poisoned, deadly streams.

– Karen Nowviskie
This poem appeared previously in the e-zine/blog Poets for Living Waters.

Dead Zones

Went down to the ship,
set keel to tempest, forth on the oily sea, and
swung our oars in the maze of pipelines.
Searing winds from the south and
our bodies heavy with weeping, but we
pulled fast over Gulf to day’s end. And there,

where moon’s eye sees nowhere,
platform corpses darken the water.
Night cowls the fish bones
in hot, filthy backflow. Rowed
through the fosse, open
for sacrifice. Black

blood flowed from a well.
Our hull snared on the cracked
oil vein, mired in swelling waters.

– Mollie Day

The Oilfield Workers Wife

In the hour that claimed her
husband’s life she was walking
down the aisles at Rouse’s
gathering ingredients for etouffee’
- onion, bell pepper, celery -
the holy trinity of sustenance.

Where was the holy trinity of the
scripture in the moments before
her husband disintegrated?

– Charlotte Ash