Fish Oil

Dear Myles, Did you see the fish and birds, the turtle, in Time? Bejesus! Washed up on a black beach, this big fish -- face smeared with oil, eyes popping, mouth stuck open in a last breath, death-gasp? This bird's head and face dripping with oil, one eye glazed, tears of oil? That turtle, fossilized in a cement of oil? As if scorched by fire, the pelican is an icon of death. Do I have any idea what this is like? The final oxygen air bubbles raking though my feathery gills? My muscles twisting into cramping pain? I thrash and thump my tail on the black sand. I have to, want to, yes, die. I must die with this fish. Feel the oxygen deprivation and suffocation tighten around my throat. My eyes bulge out. Death forces itself into my body. Oh, the ache in my brain, a hot nail piercing behind my eyes. I gasp, shudder, twitch my gills. Thick oil skims through: clogging, choking oil. I thrash my head. My eyes sting. Oil chokes my throat. In weak, powerless spasms, my tail arches. Eyes glazed, I feel the waves wash me farther up the black shore. Even the hungry, shrieking gulls reject me. Dark, bubbly surf nudges me forward, forward, away from the great sea of my birth. I am dying. Exhausted. My tail flops down onto a funereal bedspread and coffin of black sand. Yes, I must die with this fish and with every oil soaked bird. Choke with every turtle. Stand, painted black with the pelican. Then, and only then will I change and demand real change from our leaders and money-power-brokers. Imagine: all those money-eyed brokers on the stock market floor, coated with oil; their dollar bills gasping for air; Our politicians in congress, mouths choking with oil, staring at one another, unable to blink their oil-glazed eyes. Tomorrow: I awaken in this gulf of ocean seas. I am the Great Mother. Rising up, I stand over all the waters and hold my swollen, pregnant belly. All the babies within me, all the sea turtles, algae, fish, shrimp, plankton, crab, the seahorses and seaweeds, even the wetlands, will be born lifeless, stillborn, black and blue with oil. So be it, Myles. Your friend James Ciletti