Citizens of the Sea
Meghan Renaud
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Meghan Renaud
Meghan Renaud
Grade: 9
Bio: Meghan is currently the Co-President of NJHS, a member of the Pre-Engineering Society, the attendance secretary of the Plant-Based Society, and a competitor in Mu Alpha Theta. She has competed in math since fourth grade. She has been playing the violin since she was six years old, and additionally enjoys playing the ukulele. She bike almost daily, and her main hobbies include reading and painting.
What is your main source of inspiration?
Nature is almost always my source of inspiration. There are so many spectacular phenomena that take place in our environment. It is constantly a fun challenge to try to translate Earth’s creations into words.
What motivated you to write this piece?
I took a summer school class this past July where we watched a documentary on coral reefs. It was horrifying to see something as majestic and lively as The Great Barrier Reef be withered away by pollution. It honestly made me feel embarrassed to be a human being! I chose to write this poem to spread awareness and hopefully intrigue some people into researching what’s happening to our marine life.
What was the most difficult part of your writing process for this work?
Choosing the topic for my poem was very easy. I already knew what I wanted to write about. Actually creating the poem, however, was much more complex. A sestina is a very complicated poem, due to the fact that it follows a pattern sequence of six end-words. Essentially, the same set of six words have to end each line in the poem, but in a different order in every stanza. Picking my end-words and working backwards to construct complete thoughts was the most difficult part of writing this work.
Neptune looks upon his home,
The ocean filled with rubbish.
The citizens of the sea
Cry out to him, begging for rest.
He smiles down, knowing they will die.
For no one cares about the hurting in the waters.
The grand cities of coral are white and wilting in the waters.
The fish that once dwelled there must venture off for a new home.
The ones too weak to make the journey die,
With no food left to eat, only rubbish.
At least they are at rest;
Finally free from the turmoil in the sea.
So no one cares about the chaos in the sea?
About the toxic fumes being absorbed into the waters?
The factories are producing smog, a constant stream of gas that doesn’t rest.
The waters are turning to acid; the citizens have no safe place to call home.
Washed ashore to suffocate, littered on the sand like bits of rubbish.
Because of man’s ignorance, they must die.
Would the humans like it if they were the ones to die?
If their homeland was treated like the sea?
Some of mankind tries to paint the picture, but their leaders regard it as rubbish.
They can’t think of anything besides themselves; they overlook the waters.
They overlook the onyx grease that engulfs the citizens’ home.
Their greed causes them to care for only power and not the rest.
But what about the rest?
The citizens won’t be the only ones to die.
The volatile waters threaten even the humans’ home.
Hateful, wicked cyclones continue to hail from the sea.
Man’s arrogant, metal cities will be conquered by the rising waters.
They’ll be treated how they treat the earth, like rubbish!
Do the humans remember a time when the ocean was free of rubbish?
The tides used to be a colorful sanctuary; a place to rest.
Sunlight used to sparkle off the surface of the azure waters.
The ocean was a mixture of citizens from all swims of life, but we’ve slowly let that magic die.
The once handsome blue waters are now a murky mound of trash, not our beloved sea.
If we do not take action now, the citizens and the world will lose their home.
Neptune looks upon the waters, the ocean filled with rubbish.
His heart cracks for his dying home, but he puts his resentment toward man at rest.
“They will be punished,” he says, “and they will die, for land will eventually converge with sea.”
IMG_3279.movLive Reading
Live Reading
Meghan Renaud reads her sestina titled, "Citizens of the Sea."
Photo Citations: Gatis Marcinkevics, Seawaves Wallpaper, courtesy of Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/a5uptAdUmjE
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