Napowrimo.net Prompt: “Our optional prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents.”
The Poem:
TOBAGO OIL SPILL REACHES BONAIRE,
the headline blasts to the world,
but the world doesn’t hear.
Mangrove, fish, and coral
choked with flowing oil from capsized barge.
The sea hears, the shore hears,
the mangroves hear,
the fish hear,
the coral hear.
Mangroves live in salty water.
Mangroves live in harmony
with ebb and flow of the tide,
in harmony with fish,
in harmony with coral,
in harmony with humans.
Mangroves protect & buffer
homes on the coast &
hoard the carbon we spew.
Mangroves know the oil
in the depths of their souls.
Jacquelyn Markham (4/20/2024)
The Story behind the poem:
Because my latest book of poetry, Rainbow Warrior, is a collection of eco-poetry with some focus on environmental issues like oil disasters and nuclear testing, I am going to write a short poem on one of these historical events. Unfortunately, only too often do we hear about an oil spill and very often, we don’t hear at all.
In doing my research today, I realized that April 20 is the anniversary (if that’s the right word) of the devastating Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, April 20, 2010. According to Reuters news source, it was the worst accidental offshore oil spill in history, killing 11 workers and releasing 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
I addressed the Deepwater Horizon Oils Spill deeply in my poem, “Myth of the Infinite Sea,” first published in 2012 in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vol. IV, Shepherd University, and included in my collection, Rainbow Warrior, published by Finishing Line Press (2023).
This link details major oil spills in US since 1969. There are far too many!
So, this is how my poem about a historical event came to be. The event was the oil spill in the Caribbean, impacting the islands of Bonaire and Tobago, first spotted on February 7, 2024 and still leaking as of February 26. The oil was causing a “serious threat to both humans and nature.” (Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/oil-spotted-bonaires-east-coast-could-come-tobago-local-media-2024-02-26/
Jacquelyn Markham, poet & writer, author of Rainbow Warrior, Finishing Line Press (2023), Peering Into the Iris: An Ancestral Journey and China Baby, among other titles.
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