An Original Poem by Lauren Goulette
My poem is about bringing awareness to the effects of climate issues and pollution in oceans, lakes, and rivers. I’m specifically focusing on Indigenous communities and the Water Is Life movement. Below I attached a few links to check out and donate to Indigenous communities!
The Coral Reef Is A Graveyard The coral reef is a graveyard, swirling in saltwater puddle the dwindling whirlpool, a mockery of blue taffy candy, and floating bottle caps The rivers are painted yellow-brown, a brush of sulfur dioxide seething muddling, rotten mess, that heaves from the chest of concrete swimming with vacuum cleaners and plastic bags. The lakes are dark as they sweat brow, my home, a floating patch of worry, the bow of my sail is crusted through garage chutes, and the white-bellied bodies of carp The cardboard signs painted, Water Is Life wash upon shore in the night blue chalk bleeding, across the open-mouth bays of sailors She turns on the switch of her porch door, and meets a thick hum of absent electricity in its place, an empty bucket, stained with water lines In my brittle talc canoe, grappling buckskin mittens to the side an oil slick hand, dark and droopy reaches overboard from whitecaps, rocking off me the course of starlight The maples bustle from their perch, a grassfield, burnt of radiation offer support slim to none, of peach fuzz leaves, barely there Fresh streams turn into sludge of miles thick pipeline exchange, resting water, high above the line, surfaces of gentrification and stolen lands In my olive hands, a cloudy mirth bringing up soil, of barely there oceans and forgotten spirits of cresting moons that whisper to me, The heart of the people belongs to the heart of the land. -Lauren Goulette
