Mr Hunt: Save Our Seas, Day 4 - Dugong

Shallow Water

 

Streamlined and spreading

sirenian tails,

dugongs in shallows

weave bubbles in trails

 

through warm turquoise waters

spangled with sun

into the sea grass

where crystal tides run,

 

herding and grazing,

for coral and shell

have built a great bulwark

that holds back the swell,

 

but now there's a dredger

that spews a great plume:

a thick cloud of silt

and a shadow of gloom.

 

The sea grass turns yellow

and dugongs turn tail,

a man-made calamity

out of all scale.

 

They do it for profit,

though profit can't buy

the health of our Mother,

the sea or the sky,

 

and boors sit in offices

wearing their ties

spreading the silt

of their lucre and lies

 

and sly politicians

leave the sea rank

on their way to the ballot-box

via the bank -

 

but give me a glimpse

of those flukes in the surge

and I'll spurn all their wealth

and swallow the urge

 

to rail as we squander,

to weep as man fails:

there's hope in those rising

sirenian tails.

 

(Poem by Giles Watson, 2015.)

 

Done