Poems by Gloria Heffernan
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Call of the Krill
by Gloria Heffernan
From Canary Summer 2021
Gloria lives in the watershed of Onondaga Lake, a body of water sacred to the Haudenosaunee people and the site upon which the Iroquois Confederacy was founded over 500 years ago. Over the past hundred years, this lake was desecrated by industrial pollution and declared "dead" by the EPA in 1994. The Onondaga Nation has worked tirelessly with local officials and the federal government to restore the lake, and now bald eagles return annually to use it as a winter feeding ground.
They move as one
across the Southern Ocean
in swarms a billion strong,
a mile wide.
Shimmering islands
swimming beneath the waves.
No, they are not the creatures
that lure you to Antarctica
with their majesty and grace.
But they lure the humpbacks
who travel 5,000 miles
just to feast on them.
Tiny krill, miraculous in their way.
Each less than an ounce on its own,
combined, a population
that outweighs all of humanity
for the brief Austral summer.
They are the unwitting partners
in the humpbacks’ intricate choreography
as the whales plunge below the surface,
one leader submerging far into the deep
piercing the silence with its song,
signaling its kin to swirl
in synchronized spirals,
erecting walls of bubbles
the frenzied krill cannot penetrate.
And then the gorging
as leviathans break the surface
open-mouthed,
consuming their prey by the ton,
enough in one season
to sustain them for the year ahead.
The synergy of supply and demand,
monumental and miniscule.
All held in place by one point
on the thermometer as the ocean warms.
When we mourn the loss of the whales,
who will remember the krill that fed them
silent and unseen?
© Gloria Heffernan
Nightmare on Ice
by Gloria Heffernan
I wake in the middle of the night
shivering from a dream of Antarctica—
not a dream of snow and ice,
of frostbitten feet and wind lashed lips.
This is the dream where
oil spreads like a bruise over the sea
while a ruptured cruise ship
hemorrhages black ooze
into Neko Harbor.
This is the dream where
tourists trade their mittens and hats
for sunscreen and shorts
as temperatures rise
like a fever across the continent.
This is the dream where I pray
to wake up before the sludge
seeps below the ice, shrouding
every creature in viscous muck.
This is the dream
where my every fear
is magnified by
its sheer plausibility.
© Gloria Heffernan
The Wild Boars of Fukushima
by Gloria Heffernan
From Canary Summer 2021
They wander in packs
through the ancestral home of
Godzilla and Rodan—
no, not the sculptor…
the mutant pterodactyl
who screeched through
Japanese movie theaters
less than a decade after
the bomb unleashed
its flood of monstrosities.
They stroll down deserted streets,
set up housekeeping
in the abandoned homes
of villagers who fled
first the earthquake
and its attendant tsunami,
and then the meltdown at
the world’s largest
nuclear power plant.
Gorging on poisoned grasses,
swilling contaminated water,
and still they thrive—
over 13,000 at last count.
Too aggressive to domesticate
Too radioactive to eat
Too resilient to die
Officials say the villagers
cannot return
because the wild boars
pose such a threat to safety.
Well, that’s a relief.
At least it’s not
radioactive fall-out
from the meltdown.
Glad to know it’s simply
an invasion of wild boars—
just like the ones in Chernobyl.
Originally published in Awake in the World, vol. 2, River Feet.
© Gloria Heffernan