We saw you cavorting off the beach
and swam out near you, wishing,
if only for a moment, we could join you,
experience the joyous freedom that you
seemed to be normal for your kind.
We want to emulate you, to remember
how to play for its own simple joy.
Still we make you live in tanks,
for our transient pleasure, expect you
to perform on our commands.
And we trap you in our nets, set out
to feed our insatiable hunger, assuming
the ocean is there only to feed us.
We do not stop to notice that Pele
looks down on us all from her lava home,
angry at what we have done to her creation,
what we have done to you and your kind.
When you speak we are deaf to you,
but Pele hears your songs, your pleas.
We don’t stop to wonder if you
will mourn for us when we finally join
the list of species we have rendered extinct.
—
Louis Faber is a poet and writer living in Florida with his wife (a fellow poet) and their cat (their editor). His work has appeared widely in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and India and in Cantos, The Poet (U.K.), Alchemy Spoon, Dreich (Scotland), Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Defenestration, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Pearl, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among others, and was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
