DREAM VESSELS # 28: Oil Spill DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS # 28:  Oil Spill     DRAFT

     —From a collage by Marsha Connell

Two women walk over an oily sea

a necklace of diamonds

the boats pull the blue-black oil

barricades globular oil glistening

seductive oil on the rocks, the birds

in jeweled formation

the planets rise guardian-like

behind the women who walk

covering their faces

the nomadic blankets

where credo is interwoven

with the dailiness of survival

and art is not separate

but the oil, these diamonds

fabulous wealth for the few

imbalance maybe

diamonds are frozen carbon tears of stars.

A woman's face is afield of diamonds,

they fall from her hands.

The Persian Sea is doomed

we’ve defecated in the cradle of life.

These tropical seas abound with life,

they blossom like tribal rugs—

a blanket of oil for the sea

a blanket of sludge for the shore

plumes of smoke for the air

visible from space.

It took the smoke from 600 oil wells
to block the light of the sun.

how to explain to the next generation
the  sabotage of the Bergan Oil Fields.

The oil slick did not differentiate

between the grebes and cormorants.

Soldiers shooting into the dark with infrared scopes,

shot down 8000 camels as ememies of the state.

What of the 30,000 birds?

What of the Syrian bear shot in the foot
by an Iraqi soldier for target practice. 

And what of the camels caught in crossfire—
no exodus for them, other than death.

At the zoo, a giraffe bends down to eat grain
from an old man’s upraised hands.
A call to prayer from the minaret.
The desert is covered with tar, like a vast parking lot.

A boy squats by the sea to wash for prayer.
Hussain attempted to ignite the water
with 4 million barrels of oil.

The turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs,
we’re bewildered. No sea grass to eat.

The wading birds die quietly in the marshes.

Birds and insects, seeing blue sky reflected in the oil pools

mistaken it for water.
A river of oil floated down to the coast,

fresh crude trapped in the branching arms of coral
turned to asphalt, Medusa's hair has turned to stone
in the incoming tide of destruction.

Summer 1992
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell