WEBVTT

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"Massive dying off."

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"When the fish began their
dying, you didn't worry.

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You bought new shoes.

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They looked like
crocodiles, snappy and rich,

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brown as delta mud.

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Even the box they shipped
in was beautiful, bejeweled.

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You tore through masses
of swaddling paper.

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These shoes, carefully
cradled and all that cardboard

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by what you now
understand must have

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been someone's tiny
indifferent hands.

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The five fingered sea stars
you heard about on NPR.

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You must have been
driving to Costco.

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It must have been before
all the visitors arrived.

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You needed covers, pillows,
disposable containers.

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At Costco, everything
comes cheap.

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Sea stars, jellies,
anemones, all the scuddlers,

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and hovers, and clingers,
along the ocean floor.

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'A massive dying off
further displacing depleted

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oxygen,' cried the
radio announcer.

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You plugged in your iPod.

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Enough talk, you'd
found the song

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you had been searching for.

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One cargo ship going out,
one cargo ship coming in.

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Crabs crawling up trawler lines.

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Giant lobsters walking
right onto the shore.

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You've been sitting
in your car watching

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the sunset over the
Golden Gate, NPR again.

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One cargo ship going out,
one cargo ship coming in.

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Those who can, are leaving.

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The Marin Headlands
crouched toward the ocean,

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fog so thick on their
side of the bay you can't

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tell crag from cloud from sea.

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One cargo ship headed
out, another coming in.

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They're looking for a place
where they can breathe.

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You've been here
less than an hour.

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When the sun has finished
setting, you'll go home.

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In the dream your father is
the last refuse to wash ashore.

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This wasn't what you
wanted, any of you.

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The first sign of trouble was
the bottle with the message.

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That washed up years ago.

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Then so many bottles,
the stenographers

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couldn't answer all
the messages anymore.

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The women of the village
wept when your father died,

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then they lined up to
deliver tear-stained tissue

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to the Secretary
of the Interior,

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who translated their meaning
and had it writ out on a scroll.

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These were the answers your
people had been waiting for.

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That papyrus wound around
your father like a bandage.

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The occasion
announced you prayed

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proper prayers, loaded him
onto an outrigger, set him off.

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But here he is again,
stinking, swelling.

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You can't dispose of the rising
dead, and you're worried.

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What can you do?"

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