Written piece
Golden Strings
Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming
Bahamas
About this piece
Sargassum seaweed is a naturally occurring golden microalgae commonly found in the Sargasso Sea. In recent years there has been an increase in the amount of Sargassum that washes up on Caribbean beaches. My poem addresses how this adversely affects sea life, beaches and tourism.
Golden Strings
Strings of Sargassum float
across the Middle Passage
carrying the souls of ancestors
whose arms still encircle us
as we bob on waves rolling with the rhythm
of junkanoo and steel drums
Golden forests of Sargassum seaweed
clump into shaggy carpets
where juvenile turtles and crabs
eels, shrimp and fish cavort
like children in playgrounds
little brown girls and boys ring-dancing
to show us the motions
of our ancestors
of our Caribbean Sea
But in this age of global warming
an overabundance of Saharan dust
scuttles across the Atlantic Ocean reddening
our sun, hazing our skies
blanketing the masses of Sargassum
feeding them fertilizers
and stifling the young sea life
There was a time when it was fun
to catch a golden string of seaweed
(pretend I was reaching up to the sky
to pluck a constellation of stars)
I’d pop the polyps one by one
imagine I was making big bangs
then encircle my head with the seaweed string
as if I’d been crowned with a laurel wreath
like an Olympian
But now the sight
of Sargassum forests strike fear: -
rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide
permeates beaches
clogged with dying seaweed
and dead sea creatures
As I meditate on our spoilt beaches
and their dampened sea waves
from Nassau to Port of Spain
I dream that one day when I am an ancestor
a young brown woman or man
will catalyze a chemical reaction
will break the code
and spin these threads
of Sargassum seaweed into gold
and I will beam bright
as our aqua Caribbean Sea