{"id":324,"date":"2010-06-03T19:03:53","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T02:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/?p=324"},"modified":"2010-06-03T19:03:53","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T02:03:53","slug":"remembering-siesta-key-a-poem-of-the-gulf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"“Remembering Siesta Key”: A Poem of the Gulf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remembering Siesta Key<\/strong><\/p>\n

Copyright 2010 by Laura Hershey<\/p>\n

Ten days each spring, we woke
\nto the smell of salt water, seaweed,<\/p>\n

eggs my Dad fried in butter,
\nand fresh orange pulped by Nana.<\/p>\n

Before ten a.m. we wore the scent
\nof sun tan lotion, and tumbled out the door<\/p>\n

where the Gulf welcomed us with waves
\ntendering gifts: conch shells, sand dollars,<\/p>\n

tiny clams which opened into pink hearts
\nor angels’ wings spread for flight.<\/p>\n

On folding chairs and big beach towels
\nwe ate peanuts, cheese sandwiches, more oranges.<\/p>\n

We did homework — price of missing
\nthree days’ school — halfheartedly,<\/p>\n

equations and penciled solutions blurring
\namid glare on white pages.<\/p>\n

All day, from low to high tide, and back, we slid between
\nland and sea, let the surf pound and pull at us,<\/p>\n

let the sun dizzy us, built castles
\nof shovel-packed sand walls and drizzled spires<\/p>\n

with moats Dad dug deep enough
\nfor my dangling legs.<\/p>\n

Can I now, forty years later, grieve
\nthat same seawater? How many times since then<\/p>\n

has it evaporated, and fallen? How many hundreds
\nof generations of mollusks and minnows<\/p>\n

have lived and died naturally between that beach
\nand the sandbar we rafted to at low tide?<\/p>\n

In no sense are they mine to mourn —
\nbut neither can I claim innocence.<\/p>\n

The flights I board, my craving for cool air,
\nall my habits of comfort and consumption<\/p>\n

learned on family vacations, loved
\nfor a lifetime, joined to billions of others’ hungers,<\/p>\n

led to drilling in that Gulf, a hole in its heart,
\nto take what lay within.<\/p>\n

Now, I watch remote live feeds
\nof unstoppable hemorrhage, technology<\/p>\n

helpless to reverse its own mistakes,
\ndark plumes choking Gulf currents,<\/p>\n

and I grieve for fishing families, for endangered pelicans
\nand bluefin, for eleven dead workingmen.<\/p>\n

But my soul aches for what I have not seen
\nfor many years, and what might be lost:<\/p>\n

long days on the beach, solving simple problems,
\ndreading only the end of spring break, until next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembering Siesta Key Copyright 2010 by Laura Hershey Ten days each spring, we woke to the smell of salt water, seaweed, eggs my Dad fried in butter, and fresh orange pulped by Nana. Before ten a.m. we wore the scent of sun tan lotion, and tumbled out the door where the Gulf welcomed us with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[155,157,153,154,152,156],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","tag-beach","tag-childhood-vacations","tag-environmental-poetry","tag-gulf-disaster","tag-gulf-of-mexico","tag-siesta-key"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}