The following is a poem illustrating the cruelty of shark culling as a response to media-driven fear of these apex predators, which are deeply important to the health of our planet and people.
I must be afraid.
I am supposed to be-
Fear into hatred
For the sharp set of teeth
Cared for by a little iridescent creature
Who cleans them.
Does he terrify her?
Does she fear for me?
Does she know that
More likely, I will be struck by lightning,
And they cannot kill what killed me-
They cannot tear vibrance away from the clouds, nor
Cease to let the stars meet the earth in
one long knife.
More likely, I will be killed by my own toaster,
By my decision to use the knife to retrieve the bread
that burns inside.
I put the knife in the toaster and myself
in the waves-
Does she know I understand risk?
Does she know I am not filled with hatred for the teeth she cleans?
If self-defense is innocence,
Why then, do they clamor, kill it,
It’s causing us fear, kill it,
There is danger here.
In a soulless, salted gray body that so deeply belongs, so
Kill it,
But when I search, swimming,
For The Thing to fear, I find it so quickly,
In a mirror sunk beneath liquid blue crystal.
Its warbled image stays with me when I return to land, when I go to rest,
When in remembrance I think
He’s pretty,
And there is much to run from, but,
We can do something about this fear,
An earring in the undressing of a disquieted world-
Undress, undress, undress,
We are lighter at the death of a shark amidst a
pretty blue home.
And he is only down there
Waiting, waiting,
Just waiting-
For The Dentist,
Patiently.
I look at her,
And I wonder, how is she alive?
I understand if
They kill him, they kill her,
And surely they didn’t mean to
Because she is so tiny,
Unthreatening.
Kindness in the way that she cleans.
