(This week's image suggested by Jess Hager, who apparently has many doppelgangers in England.)
When I see your face, I still see my own. A distance of saltwater shakes my reflection like a breaking mirror. I know I am the fault that strikes deep into the earth at your feet.
When I look at my own face, I still see yours. Your eyes speak my words back to me in a new tone, revealing the semantic importance of a single piece--
(Quick note: this poem had three inspirations: a news report, a picture, and the song "Everything" by Helen Jane Long. Feel free to listen to the song as you read, since I was listening to it on repeat while I wrote this.)
because you looked for me in Eden I went to the mangrove where I took a lover and fed on the moon itself
thirty years later I still have a belly full of salt
Let me whisper the new religion to you in the language of photosynthesis
so deep into your ear, my love, that you still
feel the warmth of my voice flooding your insides
as the roots close around you.
(Inspired by the weekend's news that the hawksbill turtle has, while appearing to be extinct from the East Pacific shores, actually adapted to live in the salty estuaries of the East Pacific coast. Reports can be read at the Huffington Post (with pictures!) and on the BBC.
The move is particularly surprising because these turtles have previously inhabited rocky, coral-laden waters. Their newfound habitat is quite the opposite of what biologists and conservationists have known for their species. For the past three decades, these turtles have been feeding, mating, laying eggs, and thriving by the roots of the mangroves. According to this weekend's reports, biologists will now seek to learn the exact adaptations these hawksbills have undergone, and conservationists renew their call to protect the mangroves from human destruction.
Image from this photoreport of an East Pacific trip. Note: That looks more like a green turtle than a hawksbill, but the image was nonetheless appropriate.)
