WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN FISH FORGET?

by Mary K O’Melveny

This summer, Florida’s ocean water temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent scientific study revealed that rising water temperatures can cause crucial memory loss to damsel fish and other reef-dwelling species. The fish in the study who were subjected to temperatures as high as F 89.6 did not fare well, failing “to find shelter, recognize their neighbors or find food easily.” —The New York Times, August 23, 2023
Credit.Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images]Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images] The New York Times August 23, 2023

As Fahrenheit rose, some damsel fish forgot 
where to find their food sources. With each degree,
memories shifted far away. First to go: 
 
finding a meal. Next was fear. Who posed a threat. 
Where danger lay. Which reefs might safely hide 
them, what might portend trouble in sargassum 
 
seas or bubble upward in their pathways 
turning marbles of algae into floating 
spectral groupers or snappers. As memory
 
fluttered away like flotsam, reef fish failed 
to thrive, survive. Each day’s heightened heat seared
off some tiny thought, some echo 
 
that time had taught, some souvenir of before.
Yesterday’s cache of jeweled thoughts scattered
now into a vast void. Who can ever 
 
truly know what is lost as heat sears, scalds?
As oceans warm, equal risk befalls both 
predators and prey. Who will remain alive 
 
as seas simmer and pale coral reefs blanch
white as brides? Will these warmed fish discard scales
of azure, sapphire, magenta, or wispy 
 
tails of sunshine yellow, peachy orange?
Will they recall where eggs were laid or where 
sharks stayed hidden as reefs shrank? What tales
 
will they recount as awareness shapeshifts, 
then fades away like images in an infinity 
mirror? As they spin through steamy waters,
 
adrift in the present tense, our questions
float along beside them. Will we have a future?
What flashbacks will follow Fukishima?

Mary K O’Melveny, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York. Mary’s award-winning poetry has appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on national and international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s much-praised fourth book of poetry Flight Patterns was published by Kelsay Books in August 2023. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary was a finalist in the 2023 Poetry Competition sponsored by Slippery Elm Literary Journal. She is also a co-author of two anthologies of writing by The Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group, including Rethinking The Ground Rules (Mediacs Books 2022). 

FOR YUNA. FOR HER FATHER.

by Paula Schulz

(CBS News) — Norio Kimura knows he may never find his daughter’s body amid the radioactive rubble of Okuma, Japan, his deserted hometown near the Fukushima power plant. Still, he returns as often as authorities will allow, looking for Yuna, his dead daughter. It’s what keeps him sane. The survivors of Okuma, about 11,000, left the town after the earthquake on March 11, 2011, most never to return. Yuna was one of 111 – including Kimura’s wife and father — who perished in the earthquake; her body is the only one not recovered there. Kimura has so far found just one of her shoes.

                    Fukishima five years later: only one unaccounted for


For Yuna: a small deity to keep her company forever.
For her father: one pink tennis shoe.

He can visit only ten times a year, stay only five hours.
So he does, come hell or high water or blizzard, though

there’s not even a cold hope of finding her now.
But their connection not grey waves

nor cesium 137’s silver melt can sunder.
The blind hunt for anything of Yuna’s:

to keep sanity and soul together
from rising sun to rising sun, year after year--

this is the heart’s grind and gnaw,
this is the stone permanence of love.


Paula Schulz has taught for nearly twenty years.  She lives in Slinger, Wisconsin with her husband, Greg.