Tributum
Tineke Van der Eecken
Tributum, a statement of gratitude.
How a river flows into a greater water:
lake, sea. How the worth of one
pays the other. We are waterways.
Our blood connects with the Aral Sea:
salt desert where ancestors fished.
A shrinking womb split into three lakes —
climate no longer moderated by sea.
Lake Chad inland seas dry up; shore
retreats from Nigeria and Niger.
Fish farmers move with the lake,
leave irrigation plants dry.
We are waterways. Our veins
swallow the breathing wetlands.
Machala, Bolivia’s Santa Cruz,
the brackish inter-tidal coasts
of Para State, mouth of the Amazon. Delta
extends with the drop of silt in riverbeds.
In China the Yellow River grows beaks,
each new channel a promise of farmland
or catastrophe. Ataturk’s wall of rock and earth
across the river near Urfa, Kurdish land,
40,000 displaced. A dam hoards water, halts
the flow into Syria and Iraq’s Mesopotamian
marshes. Tributum, our statement of gratitude
for fish, fresh water, arable land. Our thanks
to the goats and sheep, the cattle and pigs.
Now there are more of them than us.
Inspired by Earth: Then and Now by Fred Pearce (Mitchell Beazley Publishers 2007)
How a river flows into a greater water:
lake, sea. How the worth of one
pays the other. We are waterways.
Our blood connects with the Aral Sea:
salt desert where ancestors fished.
A shrinking womb split into three lakes —
climate no longer moderated by sea.
Lake Chad inland seas dry up; shore
retreats from Nigeria and Niger.
Fish farmers move with the lake,
leave irrigation plants dry.
We are waterways. Our veins
swallow the breathing wetlands.
Machala, Bolivia’s Santa Cruz,
the brackish inter-tidal coasts
of Para State, mouth of the Amazon. Delta
extends with the drop of silt in riverbeds.
In China the Yellow River grows beaks,
each new channel a promise of farmland
or catastrophe. Ataturk’s wall of rock and earth
across the river near Urfa, Kurdish land,
40,000 displaced. A dam hoards water, halts
the flow into Syria and Iraq’s Mesopotamian
marshes. Tributum, our statement of gratitude
for fish, fresh water, arable land. Our thanks
to the goats and sheep, the cattle and pigs.
Now there are more of them than us.
Inspired by Earth: Then and Now by Fred Pearce (Mitchell Beazley Publishers 2007)
Tineke Van der Eecken is a well-travelled Flemish-Australian who writes about place as it is affected by colonial history and about climate change. She examines the struggles of human connection within this context, and explores this further through visual art in Tributaries, an exhibition this Nov-Dec 2021. readtraverse.com Facebook: TinekeVanderEeckenAuthor
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