Hello everyone. Thank you for inviting me here today to share a few poems with you.
I'd like to begin by thanking the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington
for their support of the Washington State Poet Laureate Program. And this next poem I wrote.
It was featured, well it wasn't featured, but it was it was included in an anthology. Let's see,
this anthology, "For Love of Orcas," which was edited by Andrew Chateau McBride and Jill McCabe
Johnson. And then what's really exciting is that the proceeds from sales of this anthology benefits
the Seadoc Society in support of their efforts to restore the Southern Resident Orca population so,
I think that's super cool, and also it was awarded with the 2020 Nautilus Award. And
the Nautilus Award is given for books that have a social or environmental justice focus,
and this poem was included in there and it's called "Words of Encouragement"
with an epigraph by W.S. Merwin from his poem
"For a Coming Extinction." "One must always pretend something
among the dying" - W. S. Merwin.
"When writing poems about extinction it's important that you make the poems
deep, but uplifting. Nobody wants to read a bummer poem about endangered orcas and their dead babies.
Keep it light. Keep it motivational. Encouraging. It's important to accommodate your gentle reader.
Don't say anything about how "If You won't swim in it why should they have to live in it?"
Don't say that. Honesty is offensive in this day and age. It's always been offensive.
How else do you suppose we got here? Maybe, instead of saying something like,
"The orcas and salmon are going extinct because of ordinary greed and apathy,"
instead say something like "The noble creature
with his power and grace shall journey away forever, through the portals of time."
Good taste omits mention of~ (baby orcas, abducted to be theme park clowns--
decades and chlorinated cages taking their eyes-- how during the capture, so many died.)
Don't forget to forget what you know, about human cruelty--
how the baby orcas that didn't survive had their belly slit and filled with stones,
and then were sewn closed and dumped into the sea
to sink into a darkness, into a silence so dark and so deep, public outrage couldn't reach-
a depth unfathomable as a mother's grief-
too heavy to carry for one day much less seventeen.
Among the dying shall we pretend that in the end, we too, shall not be listed
among the dead? Yes. Let's pretend, when writing poems about extinction."
So that's a hard one and
in order to not make this too dark and also to remember what we're here for,
to celebrate Orca Month, I'll close with this poem that I feel is very hopeful. It's called
"Remembering Sela at Swelisen." Now Sela is our Lhaq’temish (Lummi) word for grandmother
and Swelisen is a place name and it talks about how at low tide there's a bridge that you can
cross to an island on. Yeah, so I'll just go ahead and read it. It's "Remembering Sela at Swelisen"
We used to say, when the tide is out,
the table is set, the earth provided, and if one day it didn't, the spirit fed us.
The glittering turn of the tide, the ark of the sun in the sky,
the call of birds, the sound of waves-- to be nourished in this way makes glass doors
opening and closing themselves-- between me and that food on grocery
store shelves, seem false, empty. That food. Where does it come from?
Whose hands grew it? Was there patience and care?
Were there prayers? Think of how it got there, what it's made of.
When I was a girl, everything we ate
came from the earth that loved us-- through hands of people we loved."
Now the reason that I feel that that's helpful is because
it wasn't that long ago, it was two generations ago, you know, when my grandmother was a girl and
this region, this bio region still was healthy enough to sustain the people and I think that
nature is so resilient and so wise, I think that it if we stop impacting it
and are conscientious of how we're living and try to live in a way that is less impactful,
that it will heal itself. That things can come back. That you know, the salmon can
return and the orcas can return. I don't think it's ever, I don't think it's too late yet. So
that gives me hope. And I just like to say happy Orca Month and I wish you all the best. Hy'shqa.