I wonder if I imagine oceans having agency like me
Liza Wolff-Francis
If I were ocean, would I rise?
Would I warm with you, CO2?
Would my fever threaten everything?
Would the word everything be understood?
When something is everything, is it too much?
If I were ocean, would I tire of being barrier, buffer, broker?
If I were ocean, would I know how much depends on me?
Could I take the pressure?
Would I play a game of seduce and trap?
Or would I only respond to how humans act?
If I were ocean, would I say, let me absorb you, or would I just do it?
If I were ocean, would I hear carbon sink as insult or compliment?
Would I actually hear carbon sink?
Would I feel it?
In the deepest cold, would I take on more?
Would I pressure you, human, to become one with me?
Would you test my temperature, taste my salt?
Would my waves dissolve you, make you over, make you cool?
If I were ocean, would I hold you in the depths of me?
Be a shield for you?
Would I know my capacity is not limitless?
Would I ask if you know my entire chemistry is changing?
Would I try to tell you the more you grow, the more I hurt?
If I were ocean, would any of this be a choice?
If I were ocean, I imagine, I’d have no voice.
If I were ocean, would I rise up?
Would I rise?
Liza Wolff-Francis is the 8th Poet Laureate of Carrboro, N.C. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College and identifies as a feminist ecopoet. She has taught creative writing workshops for over a decade. Her writing has most recently appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Cider Press Review, and Unbroken: Prose Poems. Her chapbook is: “Language of Crossing” about the Mexico-U.S. border and her a full-length book is: “48 hours down the shore.”