A halo of breath: the great barrier reef

christine campos

Ecology: from the Greek oecist, house, dwelling + logy, from Greek, earliest example theology, from logos, to speak, “Word” as a designation of Jesus Christ. ~ the OED

A turquoise halo
Almost like bubbles surfacing from the deep indigo,
A leviathan sleeping for millennia, breathing immaculate,
surrounds a brown forehead of earth.

Wouldn’t an ancient Barrier
born and reborn upon itself,
upon a resting monster older than words
be unbreakable?

Lace, soft tree, sun fragilely fan, bridge, branch, bond themselves to ancestors by chance,
the bravest parents of us all:
hurling their ospring to the heavens,
microscopic shooting stars
under the luminous arch of night
to float away without a tether,
only a holy faith in the shield mirroring the circle of the moon.

But the coral, instead of
fire and blaze, whipping and stinging,
building citadels for fishes and crabs,
worshiping a rainbow of light wider than heaven
is bleaching into a narrow slant of light.

And we sit
floating on a veneer reflecting the sky,
in our man-made boats carefully maintaining the hull,
a keel balanced on that narrow vision
guarded from the reposing giant below.

Our halo, we think, is above,
a dwelling out of time,
a constellation of stars billions of lightyears away,
not billions of gametes in the primordial sea, prayers oered up, a monster we’ve made ourselves fear.

The Crown-of-thorns starfish spells death for every reef it encounters,
Spells death for every head it sits upon.

What if he had said,
This is is my father’s house, I am here. Now.
This is is the place prepared for you.
Didn’t we learn enough from one crown of thorns already?

It isn’t the great sea creature who must awaken.
When the halo of breath finally crests the cobalt expanse, one bubble at a time, we are all unmoored.

Christine Campos is a teacher / writer working on her MA in English at EIU. She lives in Urbana with her husband, four sons, and two dogs. She hopes to pursue writing more fully in the future.