LETTER: Crystal Beaches: A poem for our times

The finest shoreline you can imagine welcomes riptide's ghostly roar;

Their sugary pure white sands delight covering an emerald ocean's floor.

Eons ago Florida's northern Gulf Coast was magnificently blessed;

Beaches formed when showers of crystalline stars fell from the sky to rest.

Such superb splendor is found, only in that area it's been told;

Nigh a hundred and fifty miles of coast boast, of this wondrous behold.

Seaside claims the defining vortex designed through spiritual divine;

It's tiny village was built upon dunes molded ere planetary align.

These sacred grounds glisten magically 'neath sunshine's mystical rays;

And all are graced who linger midst gleaming crystal sands reflective plays.

Loveliness is what you see enrapturing, tho' not to remain very long;

Oil is gushing from deep wells up to the sea's surface which is so wrong.

It's 2010 and joy has faded leaving our dreams far, far behind;

Louisiana has lost a battle that fractures most every heart and mind.

Their offshore oil rigs deemed as safe, scream out foul and loud;

Thus BP and Texas oil-men scurry to bury their fault in a murky shroud.

One of their deep-sea platforms exploded in the Gulf of Mexico;

Burning and toppling over killing eleven men unprepared to go.

Devastation's only just begun tho' the eerie April day has passed;

Helpless creatures continuously suffer and die due to its fiery blast.

 Marshes near New Orleans are completely, destroyed with oily slick;

What a horrid mess rich barons have cast, making us all sick.

There is no life, within estuaries where newness once was born;

Creation is being ruined whilst fishing and oil families fight, being torn.

Note, this war is battled as time marches on and on without any fix;

Nothing gets accomplished cause jobs and money roar loudly to nix.

Nobody seems to have the answer to our heart-felt prayers we wail;

We wish BP and others hadn't allowed the Horizon to rise and fail.

The natural world is festering from wounds never to be repaired;

Greed has at last ended futures of our children, but who cared.

All we hear is drill, drill, drill from those without insight;

Can't they offer more than selfish chants and realize what is right?

Pristine crystal beaches will be, blackened, for the oil spill seems to grow;

Over two million gallons spurt up each day from an, ugly ungodly flow.

Tears fall from my heart and soul as I glimpse what is to come too soon;

Everything on Earth will be dead and gone, yet once we owned the moon.

Judith LaHaie

Santa Rosa Beach