OIL SPILL Poems

Students in Room Sixteen have been reading poetry by William Stafford,

Here is Ruby's awesome poem,

I’m walking down the cold, sandy beach,

The air feels gloomy and dead, like a graveyard on a rainy day.

The sea. A a dark greyish, colour, driving up close to me,

Then getting yanked back out by the horizon.

Almost every time now,

A new round, black formation, gets washed onto the black stained sand below my feet.

Alive, yet so dead and miserable.

I get a closer look, a small, twitching wing, soaked in shiny evil.  

I can now make out what it really is,

A small blue penguin, harmless to us, for some reason we still hurt it.

It looks up at me with a tear in its eye,

then slowly turns back to the soggy sand with a long,

drowning blink.

I wish there was something I could do with this poor, miserable bird,

But its now too late.

I placed my two fingers on its fragile chest just in case.

No pumping.

No movement.

No life.