To The Eyes Beholding StardustBY MICHELLE WHITTAKER
Whether or not you are part of my ancestral Seas: from the North,
Irish & Caribbean — it’s not pretty trying to recall or forget the sale

of names - in borders & reports - about those who drowned, or swam
around screaming out, or those who took stamps, or those crimped,

attuning atop & below the salt water, and for those who lived,
where defeat railed as motors back to a “Heaven.” Maybe

God was working on intimidation & imitation Here
leading to resistance, like how music doesn’t really distract

from the back’s burnout during plantation, harvest, & reconstruction.
But Here, we are still, recalling & forgetting, enslaved in noise

as stilted yellers, sellers, buyers, surveyors & researchers.
To my Fathers who are missing like the native ecology in the marina—

To my Mothers who ebb and rise like plastics—I’m sorry.
Why are we most troubled & so troublesome?
      

   An excerpt in the audio walk from the poem “To the Eyes Beholding Stardust” appears in Michelle Whittaker’s collection Spoke the Dark Matter (Sundress Publications, 2024) and was originally published in The Southampton Review.

For more poetry info: michellewhittakerpoet.com