Praise Song for Oceania

By Craig Santos Perez

for World Oceans Day

". . . as if there is a path where beings truly meet,
as if I am rounding the human corners."

               —Linda Hogan, "The Turtle Watchers" (2008)
 

                               ~


praise your capacity for birth
                   fluid currents and trenchant darkness
                                                      praise our briny beginning
                                   source of every breath


                      ~


praise your capacity for renewal
                     ascent into clouds and descent into rain
                                                      praise your underground aquifers
                                                                         rivers and lakes, ice sheets and glaciers
                                     praise your watersheds and hydrologic cycles


                                            ~


praise your capacity to endure
                 the violation of those who map you aqua nullius
                                 who claim dominion over you
                                                 who pillage and divide your body
                                                                 into latitudes and longitudes
                                                  who scar your middle passages


                                            ~


praise your capacity to survive
                 our trawling boats breaching
                                  your open wounds and taking
                                                            from your collapsing


                                                                                                                 depths


                ~


praise your capacity to dilute
                 our heavy metals and greenhouse gases
                                                    sewage and radioactive waste
                                                                             pollutants and plastics


                                    ~


praise your capacity to bury
                our shipwrecks and ruined cities
                                             praise your watery grave
                                                                      human reef of bones



                 ~


praise your capacity to remember
                         your library of drowned stories
                                                 museum of lost treasures
                                                                             your vast archive of desire


                 ~


praise your tidalectics
                 your migrant routes
                                   and submarine roots


                                                          ~


praise your capacity to smother
                whales and fish and wash them ashore
                                        to save them from our cruelty
                                                      to show us what we're no longer allowed to take
                               to starve us like your corals starved and bleached
                liquid lungs choked of oxygen


                               ~


praise your capacity to forgive

please forgive our territorial hands and acidic breath
                                   please forgive our nuclear arms and naval bodies
                                                      please forgive our concrete dams and cabling veins

please forgive our deafening sonar and lustful tourisms
                                  please forgiven our invasive drilling and deep sea mining
                                                                 please forgive our extractions and trespasses


                               ~


praise your capacity for mercy

please let my grandpa catch just one more fish

                                     please make it stop raining soon
                                                                 please make it rain soon

please spare our fragile farms and fruit trees
                           please spare our low-lying island and atolls
                                                please spare our coastal villages and cities
                                                                please let us cross safely to a land without war


                               ~


praise your capacity for healing
                          praise your cleansing rituals
                                                  praise your holy baptisms


                      ~



please protect our daughter
                  when she swims in your currents



                ~



praise your halcyon nests
                  praise your pacific stillness
                                  praise your breathless calm


                ~


praise your capacity for hope

praise your rainbow warrior and peace boat
                       praise your hokule'a and sea shepherd
                                                 praise your arctic sunrise and freedom flotillas

praise your nuclear free and independent pacific movement
                   praise your marine stewardship councils and sustainable fisheries

                                                      praise your radical seafarers and native navigators

praise your sacred water walkers
                   praise your activist kayaks and traditional canoes
                                      praise your ocean conservancies and surfrider foundations

praise your aquanauts and hydrolabs
                    praise your Ocean Cleanup and Google Oceans
                                       praise your whale hunting and shark finning bans

praise your sanctuaries and no take zones
            praise your pharmacopeia of new antibiotics
                            praise your #oceanoptimism and Ocean Elders
                                                     praise your wave and tidal energy
                                                                             praise your blue humanities

                             ~


praise your capacity for echolocation
                  praise our names for you that translate
                                      into creation stories and song maps
                                                        tasi : kai : tai : moana nui : vasa :
                                                                                 tahi : lik : wai tui : wonsolwara


                   ~


praise your capacity for communion

praise our common heritage
                 praise our pathway and promise to each other
                                                     praise our most powerful metaphor
                                                                                praise your vision of belonging

praise our endless saga
                 praise your blue planet
                                        one world ocean

praise our trans-oceanic
                     past present future flowing
                                                 through our blood
Copyright Credit: Craig Santos Perez, "Praise Song for Oceania" from Habitat Threshold.  Copyright © 2020 by Craig Santos Perez.  Reprinted by permission of Omnidawn Publishing.
Source: Habitat Threshold (Omnidawn Publishing, 2020)