Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, March 24, 1989

Response Teams

Naked Island: Workers in red and yellow raincoats and white hardhats, walk with high pressure, hot water hoses, spraying sludge. Some use buckets and shovels. Some stand weeping. Nearby, she holds a dead murrelet in her hands, tarballs at her feet.

Back home, Grandmother removes the Sea Grizzly Chilkat robe from her cedar chest, a blanket that took her two years to weave. She wraps it around her shoulders and turns up the radio. She dances to a new song: 987-foot tank vessel Exxon Valdez, 11 million gallons, oil slick, over 3,000 square miles, 350 miles of beaches.

*from my poetry chapbook "Slick," which is available at White Knuckle Press.