Written for the marine algal crisis currently unfolding in the coastal waters of Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri Countries.
An oyster swallows grit or grain
and softens it, in time, with nacre
layer by layer by lustrous layer.
A pearl from pain.
But if plastic? sludge?
an oil slick — an algal spore —
Foaming shores: not the silver swirling sort
not spume and spray,
but tussock crops of clotted froth.
Gluey, beige. Pipis / mussels / cockle shells:
the early kill has spilled ashore.
Daily, one oyster can filter hundreds of litres of sea.
Cysted, scarred: the kidneys falter. Jaundiced
waters / sclera / seafoam. Rolling, roiling waterskin,
the blood, the coast
where toxins, waste
coagulate.
How long have divers dove these coasts as seabirds roved the sea
for feed, and tides clamoured their silver applause
to dimpled rock and clifftoe.
Summer floods flushed farming waste from estuary
to fevered sea. Pressure highs stagnated currents in the bay.
Pulse unspooled, the blood pools, bruises, cools.
The algae bed, and fed, and bred.
Ever heard of a drowning fish?
The algae die, eat oxygen. Greening waters chew at scales,
gills and skins. Chew fish by the school, by the egg,
by the fry. Limp crabs lurching in the ebb
and then the driftwood dead.
Two bronze whalers, bloodied bellies.
Daily, rays: the fiddlers, eagles,
pink-pocked wings. A fallen angelshark
and seals, sea-stars, slumped like rocks.
Then the cuttlefish, globefish, dolphins.
Boarfish burrfish pufferfish cobblers.
Flatheads cowfish grunters whiting.
Leatherjackets wobbegong.
Snails by the thousand and some hundred
smothered dragons. Razor-clams and oysters,
oysters.
Children learn by the bucket which are ripe,
brined meat fine to pluck, to shuck. Come sit, come slurp
the cool ribbed cups.
We hopped the tidepools, cut our soles on limpets, shells.
And there, where the rocks bite into the sea: an oystercatcher,
small god, stilt-legs, feet in the silt of small gods in their millions.
It’s beak a compass to the sun.
Months, we waited. Said that winter would soothe the sea.
That winter will soothe the dead, the dead.
The solstice passed
and still, green swill, this septicaemic beat.
Officials say they didn’t predict this longevity of death
but admit to no reports. The algae outgrow a megacity.
Gritty tides, gritted teeth, we tilt and teeter again to heat.
There’s only so much the ocean can eat.
The environment minister, quote, we are helpless
in the force of nature. Oh yes, the poor minister,
the helpless government that
(any day) could vote away
the mines and pipelines, coal-faced tax breaks.
But if we sowed new oyster beds? and if the reef
could breathe, the kelp reseed? and if the first carers
of these waters could care for them again
as it was done since the sun can remember?
and if we closed every last well, rig, coal port —
let them close, those tired mouths.
We hopped the tidepools. Mackerel clouds, a streaky opal sky.
Meet me between these two blue mirrors
where oystercatchers fossick for feed. It’s here,
all here,
this ocean is us. Human blood, neuronal fluids
are salted by this beat, this beat, this bracken systole.
Pain in the flesh. How will the oysters make pearls
of this?
