Oceanic and Education

Just prior to reading Oceanic, I watched Aquaman for the first time. Honestly, I only watched it for Jason Momoa's toplessness, but it had a sweet little love story and a message about humanity’s environmental destruction. Oceanic is the embodiment of love, of a healed earth, of the fluidity between human and non-human life. Nezhukumatathil is a metaphorical genius, she crafts the ocean into the page, you cannot help but feel the sway of the water when you read the lines.

One poem in particular that hit home for me was “Mr. Cass and the Crustaceans” (8-9). This story is at the heart of the work. A teacher who spent the time to help each student build their own individual connection to creatures outside of themselves. “Mr. Cass, who / gave us each a crawfish he found…” How he instilled a curiosity in “the only brown girl / in the classroom” that carried on way past the fourth grade.

Much of who we are is who we’ve learned from, those who have fostered and helped grow that spark inside ourselves. For me it was Jeff Perkins, photography and ceramics teacher at Verde Valley School. There is so much I would thank and say to Jeff now. “How I wish I could tell Mr. Cass / how I’ve never stopped checking the waters / the ponds, the lakes, the sea.” As I have never stopped pointing my camera at what’s in front of me. There is a depth in the connection between the speaker of this poem and water, one that was able to flourish inside a classroom and explode outside of it. Why can’t education always be like this? Why can’t every child have an ending similar to this: “I think / how you first taught us kids how to listen to water, / and I’m grateful for each story in it’s song.”

Xoxo,
Rai