Patricia Belote

Patricia Belote
 
Rupture
     Gulf of Mexico, April 2010

Irreparable breach for twenty days and counting:
tourniquet insufficient.
Oil pulsates gallons-per-second
as unfathomable harm grows
malignant and deep.
Plankton, precious small things, have no voice we can hear.
 
Yet, the first tangible symptom—
twenty dead sea turtles wash up before oil reaches shore.
Perhaps the shock of the explosion blew their internal compass;
hemorrhaged, their heads condensed like black holes.
Instead of navigating magnetic fields, lifeless bodies
reached beaches they never knew.
 
Even so,
we are hungry still for deep blood.
Our appetites never sated,
ransom and remain
deaf to sentient fragility.
 
 
 
Patricia Belote lives in the Panhandle of Florida a few miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. At this moment the Gulf is brewing a summer storm. In squally weather like this, Patricia hunkers down and writes serious poems. Patricia has recently retired from Northwest Florida State College. In Fall 2012 her work was published in the The Healing Muse, A Journal of Literary & Visual Arts, currently appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and is forthcoming in Tiger’s Eye, A Journal of Poetry.