Carbon
after “The Once and Future World” by J.B. Mackinnon
We may reflect the sun back onto itself
We may sequester & gather in
chambers below the earth
on which
we kneel or stand or slumber.
Or
Whale song
ear bones as big as fists
boundless blubber bathed in the sea
plankton krill whale
Iron rich shit
“fecal plumes” “colour of oversteeped green tea”
Whale falls cratered with life
When living things die
May we slow down
Note: If the blue whale population of the Southern Ocean was rebuilt to the extraordinary numbers of pre-whaling an estimated 3.3 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon would be stored in blubber, bone, and muscle for centuries, even after death. The blue whale population is currently one-tenth of their previous numbers.
Nesting
A blue bellied bird hops on currents from fence post to fence post
I would be following her
if I was not already walking this new way
home
I have lost a love
that I never was sure how to write about
except through the glimpses of
what we had seen
the bear and the otters and the lynx and the sheep and the ravens and the worms and the roadrunner
sleeping in the home I knew for a year
ought I be broken now?
ought I be tired?
She lands softly on the sand brown soil of my yard
I tell her of the secret treats
black oil in the bird feeders
she seems delighted for an instant
before flight
takes us both just far enough
elsewhere.
Triana Reid is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Poetry. Her poetry has previously been published in the IAIA student anthology, WORD (a publication by the New Mexico School for the Arts), and SOMOS Young Writers and is forthcoming in the Santa Fe Literary Review.
Header image by jamesteohart, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Triana Reid by Jason Ordaz
