I Dream of an Ocean

My Fourth Entry (A Poem)

I dream of an ocean
With a white sandy beach
I dream of an ocean
That has fish within my reach

I do not want to see
This dying coral reef
Once an extravagant creation
Is now merely great grief

I remember the colours
The pretty ocean used to be
Blue, green, grey some days
But never a plastic coloured sea

Even the birds have left
They who once circled the sky
No longer hunt for fish
In the sea that is left to die

My mother used to tell me
That the ocean is a place
Where stories hide and memories lurk
Now it's gone without a trace

My father always told me
Why the ocean meant survival
Income and food was its gift to us
And now it's gone beyond revival

Then sometimes I dream
(And at first I used to scream)
Of a person dressed in white
Who appears every other night

He calls himself honesty
He's a wise, old man
He only says a single line:
"Save the ocean, because you can."

I am a single, lone person
How could I possibly do that?
There is so much to be done
The ocean is gone, isn't that the fact?

The wise old man appeared again
He who had called himself honesty:
"The dying ocean is yours to save
If others choose to just let it be."

And now I find myself
Making sacrifices every day
With his words in my mind
Forever on replay

I give up the plastic bottles
I find convenient to use
And replace them with another type
That I can actually reuse

I put all my harmful plastics
In a rather decent place
It's the recycling center
That leaves nothing to waste

And suddenly I saw
Something I never imagined
People followed me step by step
And slowly, amazing things happened

The ocean began to get clearer
Even our own blessed land
The plastics left our homes
Change had taken its stand

To think that something
Like this started with me
And all it took
Was a man called honesty

It warms my heart
And now I can see
That when people step forward
We can all save our sea.

- Shreya, Fiji