Ochre Plumes
by Allie Ayers

Submerged beneath your clear, rippling skin
lies tragedy, hemorrhaging from placed pipes,
dilapidated, rusted and worn thin.
Your sunken, cavernous depth mutely gripes.

The spill spreads across your surface in blight,
stretching into long strands of stratus cloud.
Your once shifting, reflective planes of light
now lay, veiled beneath a thick, ochre shroud.

But alas, Ocean, you remain naïve
to our thoughtless and destructive ways;
it is only now that we think to grieve—
once we cannot return to prior days.

The pain we have made cannot be undone;
you silently sit, waiting, blaming none.