Wonder Poem: Your Tongue as Pen to Stories of the World

Today’s Wonders of the World Poem is focused on the Great Barrier Reef. I found myself entranced first by the colors, which are brilliant, and then on the sobering news of how Global Warming and environmental change is killing off the reef, making it gray and solid. The poem then become a metaphor poem (or is every poem ultimately a metaphor poem in the end?)

Your Tongue as Pen to Stories of the World (Great Barrier Reef)

You used to splatter me with paint:
bright blues;
interesting oranges;
radiant reds.

I’d lounge here quietly in this cascade of colors,
letting the currents bring you in and out,
and in again as with the tides,
your tongue as pen to stories of the world.

But even I can hardly fail to notice that
with each passing day,
our hues have become a bit more duller
and our movements, ever slower.

Where once the solid form of us was teeming with love
and alive with wonder,
now, it is becoming little more than
a hardened reminder,
a silent statue of remembrance to
what once might have been.

Here is the podcast, too.

Audio and voice recording >>
 

Peace (on the reef),
Kevin