Diaspora
While we still wandered the Sinai,
deep sea corals staked claim
to their own promised lands, settled
on cliff face and sea bed.
Governed by commandments
writ in strands of DNA,
diaspora corals migrated north
to the Arctic, south to the edge
of Antarctica. For millennia,
tribes called bamboo, bubble gum,
sea whip colonized abyssal darkness,
survived on manna called plankton.
Today, Methuselah corals
contemplate the deluge --
our plastic bags, 6-pack rings,
old tires, shampoo bottles --
as the acidic ocean pickles
them slowly like herring.
The waning oxygen leaves
them gasping for god.
deep sea corals staked claim
to their own promised lands, settled
on cliff face and sea bed.
Governed by commandments
writ in strands of DNA,
diaspora corals migrated north
to the Arctic, south to the edge
of Antarctica. For millennia,
tribes called bamboo, bubble gum,
sea whip colonized abyssal darkness,
survived on manna called plankton.
Today, Methuselah corals
contemplate the deluge --
our plastic bags, 6-pack rings,
old tires, shampoo bottles --
as the acidic ocean pickles
them slowly like herring.
The waning oxygen leaves
them gasping for god.
Sylvia Byrne Pollack’s work appears in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Clover, Antiphon and others. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, winner of the 2013 Mason's Road Winter Literary Award and a 2019 Jack Straw Writer. Her full-length collection, “Risking It,” has been published by Red Mountain Press in 2021.