by Chloe Firetto-Toomey
Three sections inspired by eco-documentaries
Mum and I visit the Sistine Chapel and agree
it is one ornate question: cherubs with spears,
gold-threaded shadows, massacres in the tapestries.
People gather like crows or cells or clouds, taking pictures.
Michelangelo’s distant fingers
so high, the altar so small.
Recall Sagrada Familia, doves chiseled in the masonry.
Gaudi’s lungs of light, harnessing
every hue in stoned-carved hallows—
This is how man should capture everything.
Witness the body’s departure
:: shaped by wind, carved into the mouths of birds ::
:: a pyre flickers on still water ::
two modes of reckoning.
Snub-nosed monkeys
in robes, munching lichen.
A circus of parrots in the canopies.
Jellyfish, immortal, unless eaten.
Is death another word for home;
departure or arrival?
:: :: ::
Walking with the archeologist
along the old river line
scanning for clam-shell clusters,
conch spines, divots in the bedrock.
He stops to select an oblong object
from the dirt. Coprolite, he says,
fossilized human shit, and holds it up for me.
A dark and slender root which he places in a Ziploc.
We wander to the edge of Little River,
:: glimpse the water :: as you might glimpse ::
patches of sky from a New York alleyway.
Styrofoam icebergs dissipate to snow balls::
mint flotsam, peppered and oiled;
an abandoned washing machine
embedded in the riverbed.
All our empty packages
tripped up-wind,
to crowd
gutters,
to settle
here on surface
and seabed.
Then, movement: a paddle-tail
disturbs the rubbled water,
dislodges plastic bags and bottles—
two manatees surface, wastelands bob
against their large grey bodies.
It could be a clip from an eco-documentary, I say,
manatees return home as guests. [1]
:: :: ::
There's nothing wild. There's no wilderness. It's all home [2]
A freighter ship trundles through the arctic sea
dwarfing icebergs
black bow
arrowing the hazed water
:: a polar bear curled on the black rocks
hind legs tucked
to elbows
head bowed
on fore-paw
mourning the vibrancy of glaciers ::
Did a wild and invasive species take refuge in us
while we were sleeping?
Gannets nosedive
for the secrets sardines keep
while the world binges
on moon pies, medias, and
food-shaped candy,
heads turned away from the window.
90 percent of the goods we consume are brought to us by ship. [3]
[1] “24 Snow” directed by Mikhail Barynin (Environmental film festival)
[2] Ray Reitze in “Guided” directed by Bridget Besaw (Environmental film festival)
[3] "Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping " directed by Denis Delestrac
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