I stand by the shoreline, the treeline burning behind me and tears streaming down my face. I can hear the birds dropping out of the sky; their small bodies slamming against the pavement. I can hear the fire spreading into every home and cave; I hear the cries of mother bears watching their smoldering cubs turn to ash. I feel every inch of pain that they feel, I hear every cry for help they make while the rest of the world stays deaf and dumb to their voices. My body aches as my eyes come across the oil-caked ocean. I fall to my knees, I'm hyperventilating now. They can't breathe, they all can't breathe. All the air, all the air is blocked from them. I see old rusted ships sinking beneath the ebony tide, like giant wounded monsters bleeding into the sea. I can't stop any of this; I can taste the inky black beneath my feet.
I started to walk into the salty deep, sand beneath my feet and oil around my waist. I can feel the weight closing around me. I have to find the whales. The whales that once did guide us to the islands of life when we were but infants on rafts drifting in a sea of darkness. The oil covers me as I dive deeper down in this heavy sea, I can feel my body adjust to the massive pressure. Dying reefs dot the bottom as the bodies of the fish and folk of the sea drift upward. Their corpses dance in the gaze of the ocean current, it's grip tightening on my chest as I feel the oil seizing my lungs.
Millions of tons press down on me as I come up for breath only to be smothered in the lifeblood of some machine. The black gold seeped into my eye sockets; the agony that racks my body now is sending me into shock. I reach out for some kind of help. I cry out for something, something that remembers my family, something that can feel the Maori blood pounding in my veins. We were once in great debt to the sea, we covered out bodies in its symbols and treated it as our god. I could only hope that maybe over this time, after all those sacrifices, after all the offerings, that maybe the great beasts of the sea would take pity on me.
Suddenly I'm lifted from the sea; I can feel a warm light pour over my body as the shamanic mantras of the whales carry me up. Suddenly, I can see again; their torch guiding me out of blindness. Their voices were comforting as I looked down to see that we're hundreds of feet above the ocean. We were flying through the air like arrows; clouds shoot past as we push out of earth's rotting womb and into the great vacuum. Dolphins shot past in a playful swirl of light, leaving a gorgeous ice trail in their wake. The voice was unanimous before I could ask a question. I could feel all their mighty hearts reach into mine and their voices saying "We're going home" in some beautiful voice.
Miles below us, people looked up as we flew away. People I knew, people that were strangers to me; politicians and CEOs stood with mouth agape at the magnificent arc of flesh and blood left their wretched rock behind. They would die a thousand times over for what they've done; they will know death by their own hand for this.
I looked back at the planet as the nukes went off, the trees grew gray and suddenly the sky turned a gory red. We were fleeing from the dead body of our mother. I took moments to recall all of the faces I would never see, all the people that would turn to human shadows; black shapes left behind on the walls of buildings after the blinding nova of the atom engulfs their frail bodies. Once again, before I had time to speak they all spoke quicker than my mind could articulate a single sentence. "We're going to Neptune, our home world. It can be yours as well if you'd like". At such a privilege placed before me I had to make the right choice; something those that came before me weren't capable of. "Sadly, I must decline. I think I should be the last, the same would only happen again and that is something I won't be putting upon you". That glowing voice returned to my mind "So be it". We sped off like comets in the naked sky towards our final chance of life. At last, I could rest again.
0 comments:
Post a Comment