The Voice of Eel-Grass
Eel-grass © Steve Karpiak, courtesy of Friends of Casco Bay
Once again, the state of Maine has plans to turn Sears Island into an industrial sacrifice area, as a land base for offshore industrial wind power projects. Even with the adjacent Mack Point deep water industrial site, the state wants to go ahead and create a new industrial site on Sears Island. The project seems to have the support of the “major” environmental organizations, showing their support for wind as a cleaner source of power, but who speaks for the marine ecosystem in these plans? Who speaks for the aquatic plant and animal life and for the health of the surrounding ecosystem? Recent studies have shown a dramatic loss of eel-grass populations in Casco Bay. Where is the voice of the eel-grass in Penobscot Bay?
Eel-Grass
No matter what I say,
all that I really love
is the rain that flattens on the bay,
and the eel-grass in the cove;
the jingle-shells that lie and bleach
at the tide-line, and the trace
of higher tides along the beach:
nothing in this place
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
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eel-grass – Sears Island
Hard to be lonely
in the lushness of
eel-grass, feeling the ocean’s
ebb and flow —
hard to know
want or hurt or
waste, here below
the sun, the sky,
the water’s edge of
grass and mud and
moving with the moon —
hard to know
the hearts of men, those
who would fill and spill and
kill all below
their own shallow depth of heart, their
line of sight —
hard to know these hearts,
hard to be alive,
hard to survive
in the face of their
rush toward riches,
toward death,
hard to be alive.
—Gary Lawless
Gary Lawless is a poet, bioregional advocate, and co-founder of Gulf of Maine Books, in Brunswick Maine.
He and his wife Beth Leonard care-take the old farm of Henry Beston & Elizabeth Coatsworth (both acclaimed authors of the mid-20th century), near Damariscotta Lake.
Gary’s score of poetry collections includes Poems for the Wild Earth and Caribou Planet. His new book of poems is How the Stones Came to Venice, and his poetry blog.
The grey feather on the salted sand
shows signs of time yet
I am thrilled by neutral grey and white.
Can the eco-neural network
that greyed the found feather,
that turns the clouds dark,
that threads between Spruce needles
and rounded pebbles,
morph messenger or talisman?
The guardian of sentience whomever,
however, cause or effect, creates
functional art in the grey feather,
above the grey bay and
weaves connections
between stones, plants and sentience.
Thank you for this lovely reminder that the small, the quiet, the tender things lie vulnerable to the industrial onslaught of offshore wind energy. We must stand strong to defend these wildnesses, these innate beauties of the Earth who cannot speak for themselves.