I read an article yesterday morning in The Guardian about
unmarked graves along the Rio Grande, where the people of Piedras Negras (a
Mexican border town) bury those they've found who’d tried to cross the river and
drowned (Migrants
drowning in Rio Grande). There was a picture of the crossed sticks
that served as markers, with the river beyond.
I live in a state that has several ICE-run prison camps for adults and children who cross the border. This is how the US deals
with immigration: criminalization. It is the way the US government seems
to deal with everything – as a war. Us versus Them. Blame, Rage, Ignorance,
Willful Cruelty. It is a culture of revenge. It ends with state murder, plain
and simple. Daily.
The next article I read was about how the mussels in Bodega
Bay had cooked in their own shells because of extreme temperatures (Mussels
cooked by extreme heat). What to do? The heart and mind squirm, spin, burning in their shells. I wrote a poem.
In the poem, I put all of the bodies of the dead in the same
cognitive and emotional universe. I am not saying that the bodies found in the
river and the bodies of the mussels are the same by any stretch of the
imagination - but the death of those people and of those bivalve mollusks (a
foundation species – the ecosystem depends on them) are in the same universe of
cause and effect, they are connected by catastrophe, they are connected on
the same earth that is in the process of collapse.
People are dying
in the desert. People are drowning in rivers. Children are sleeping on concrete
prison floors, alone. Mass extinction is ongoing.
As I was writing I imagined that the beautiful blue shells
of the mussels – their blue language – could somehow give a voice to those
buried along the river. It is a poetic leap, a desperate leap...trying to making
connections where there are (seemingly) none…
Unmarked
Sticks tied together to make a cross,
crosses line brown water, follow a slow
brown current; bodies un-named, un-
nameable, blue, blue in brown; tiny
blue bodies cling to shore-rock, wings
open, striated blue wings name the
shades of blue, a blue language for all
the ones who cannot be named, who
line the river, who must
not be named
(if we name them, then they will appear);
blue bodies annealed to rock, mouths
open, cooked under the sun, shining
off the surface of the waters; oh holy
sun, false sun, fake-news sun, cooked
meat in a blue shell sun; oh holy water,
false water, fake-news water, brown
water in the heart; heart burnt off,
sorrow drowned, yearning burnt, love
drowned; in the heart of the water, in
the heart of the sun; in the heart, in
the heart, a feeble beat in foam; foam
retreats into an oncoming wave; print
of a gull-claw in wet sand; wet sand,
a mirror; sticks tied together…
At the same time, I read an article where Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg (both heroes of mine) were in a conversation
together (Hope
is contagious) and the take-away was about action. Action helps
dissolve despair, helps work through the avoidance behavior that results from deep
depression. The behavior of retreat is natural, a survival mechanism, when our nervous systems become overwhelmed. Remember this: Greta Thunberg started out standing alone – and now is the voice
for a worldwide movement. Action is the flaming door – sometimes into the
burning house, sometimes out of the burning house. Sometimes both at the same
time.
The only way out is
through.
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