He Who Hunts the Sea Otter
I’ve run out of the wherewithal to withstand the pressure of your violence.
You hunt the mothers and their crying babes for sport and for pleasure.
What would you like from me in exchange for my own body? What can I do to make you give it back to me and my young? You are encircling me in the cold waters with your spears and you jeer at me and ask me why I’ve shown my face in my own home.
Soon there will be none of us left, and you’ll resort to mocking our taxidermied forms and wearing our pelts as coats and hats just to smell our bodies and the bodies of the children that come from our own wombs, birthed into that treacherous sea that is our lives, the one you’ve failed for generations to conquer.
Your imposing ships made of hollow wood and your arrogance borne of man were not made to endure this winter, for all you have are your ropes and your sails and your pathetic little muskets and your ignorant little violence.
Does it make you feel so big to wear me down like you do? Does it make you feel so big to watch me in my native waters like you do? Does it make you feel so big to hunt the women and children the way you do?
What would you like from me? Would you like me to cry? Would you like me to do as you say? You think you know anything of this Bering Sea? You think you know anything of the captain’s courage? You think you know anything of the Alaskan winds? You have never swum the currents of the deep and you have never held a pup on your belly while capturing clams for the family. You have only sunk the wasted bodies of so many mothers and daughters to the bottom of the ocean as you failed to skin them for furs, have only shot the natives down as they protested in vain for the weary sea otter.
The joke is on you, good sir, because you’re going to hell when you die. I will be in the garden, for I have turned to daisies, my body is mushrooms on trees. You cannot touch me because I am the tide and I am the moon. You cannot touch me because I am the words and the memories of your violence, and as the wind whispers through the valley so I will taunt you with the breeze, the ease of my power that uses no force.
You are petulance, and you walk the earth, guns in tow, cities built in your name, and yet you know nothing. You toss about your gold and your silver, and you are ever more poor, ever more destitute than the humble willow and the small sparrow, than the dandelion spreading its seeds in the green grass.
All you know of the beauty of the world is that you have not made it, you have created nothing with your own two hands. So you steal it with your lustful, angry fists like the spoilt child that you are, and you mock the orca as she cries for her calf.
You have no idea what you’ve done. All you know is that you want more and more and more of my children and I until we die at your hand, your command, sinking below the waves with a silent thud.
Is that what you want? My resignation into the water? My submission to the wind? Shall I wash your feet and kiss your hair? Is that what you want? You would like to matter, and you believe that your matter is your might and your murder and my body in your bed, my skin in your teeth as they sink into my delicate flesh, the flagpole you plant in the soft ground.
What matters is not you or I, is not violence or righteousness, but the cry of the hawks and the call of the wolf, the sway of the great pine forest and the rush of the mighty Mississippi. My fury is in the blizzard that blinds your armies and the frost that blackens their fingers and toes. My fury is the fire I carry in the sun of the summer day that burns cancerous sores into your selfish skin as you traverse the desert for spices and glory. You think you can mine enough ores, trade sufficient quantities of opium and furs, build enough hollow knowledge in your own name, for any of this to matter?
Your name has no point, your wisdom no claws, your islands no corals and your country no place. You are nothing, little man. You are nothing without me and my young. You are nothing without my tadpoles and minnows, my seeds and my petals. You are nothing, puny little man, ambling along in shoes two sizes too big.
You are nothing without me. So you’d better take up your blank books and your dull swords and your fool’s gold. And you’d better run.
