Stories the Sand Won't Hold
Poetry by Kaia Beddows
Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson
“You are the problem
Your lifestyle is my problem.”
Tension creeps upon tranquility.
Deceitful dependency decides,
At every level, we’re thriving,
Unconditionally.
Pollution in passivity,
A subliminal hobby,
Risking extinction of photo opportunities.
You post that image.
A background at Death’s door,
Knocking away while you scroll
Through awe-inspired insecurity.
Toss your half-consumed latté
Right back into cyclical devastation.
“I can’t get you to pay”
Amidst fauna as precious as diamonds
And fragility of extravagant brush,
Clarity:
We should’ve listened to the baobabs.
“How do you become important to me?”
When you treat the sea
As no more than
Liquified opportunity,
Are you still able to see
Its grasp of monstrosity?
As notorious killers on land,
With one step into murderous waters,
Life,
Far more beautiful than yours,
Leaves you suffocating in sargassum.
Acting Chief Agriculture Officer Michael James
“Pests don’t need passports”
Still slaves to the storm,
fickle destruction,
hardly mercurial,
as Man should be.
Greed impedes and
“Agricultake” asserts
Vectors are not
The vexers we so embody.
“Grow what you eat, eat what you grow”
Before the bony cows
Drop dead from exhaustion
And the chickens
Refuse you their eggs.
Before milk becomes a luxury,
And your children demand to know
How an omelet made your taste buds tingle,
Savour every bite.
Andre Ferguson: The King of Fishing
“It’s time to go fight the water now”
Pile Bay,
Population: ~fifty,
Awaits their king,
A provider, a leader, a friend.
“Spearfishing,
you know,
You can hunt the fish,
Run them down.”
Respect,
Acknowledgement,
Patience, unachievable
To most land dwellers,
Implemented simultaneously
For a perfect strike
To feed familiar dozens.
No matter how dirty the waters,
How brutal the depths,
How unknown the journey,
How unpredictable the consequence,
“You have to survive,
You can’t give up.”