Poems by Jimmy O'Hara

“Saltwater Waltz”
             By Jimmy O’Hara

At seven I brought home Red.
His crimson scales were like rubies
glimmering behind museum glass.
I gazed at him for hours, awestruck
by his regal and buoyant flamenco
along the substrates of fluid light.

At eight I got ten more fish.
My rapt fascination had gone
belly-up. Shells lined the pebbled floor,
echoing a saline language the fish knew
but would never reach. One by one,
each flowed into the other, corpses
layer by layer piled in the see-through
vessel of a sleek zebra-striped tiger
flopped to stillness. Only Red remained.

I saw that when scattered leagues
and eons from the primordial womb,
fish collapse inward like dead stars
humming, compasses adrift in space
without poles for instinct and balance.
I saw that fish could wish for something
wider, to float idly and with vast purpose
amid the grand expanse, the fluent ethers
webbing their deep and cerulean dreams.

I saw that our scaled kin could take
a kind of pride in welcoming the day,
ready to toil in the honest work
monsoons and low tides bring;
I saw how they cast an entangled net
across the water table, that motherly
matrix and the gifts it washes ashore—
nutrients from sun to sea enshrined
in our lungs, our saltwater channels
six times a second rushing blue blood
toward the heart always just in time
and red cells toward the flesh woven
between our fingers and bare toes.

At nine I wept the entire car ride
to a lake where I set Red free,
and wept the entire way home.
I learned the hard and only way:
Red could at last join the ineffable dance,
inherit the blue and vital earth turning.
I learned how friendship and freedom
braid unified, two fruit vines arching
outward and back around to guide
the hand that holds and then lets go,
the open palm releasing sentient life
ever into itself.

I like to believe he lived for years,
strutting the runways, waltzing about
the ballroom court to crown and bow
lovingly before his ballet partners,
fathering new and bejeweled orbs
into being. Most likely, he died fast—
unadjusted to the elements—
within the week, maybe a day:
One full day, one round and precious hour
spent tasting the salt of a life worth living;
One fleeting moment of remembrance,
a brief and sacred window into
something wonderful.


“Three Times A Day”
             By Jimmy O’Hara

Three times a day we take a stand,
our plates the magnetic surface
where principle binds to action.
Three times a day we are the foragers
whose gentle mercy is both invitation
and warning, the new hunter-gatherers
whose handiwork threads into and between
the bright webbed canvas of conscience.

Three times a day we practice alchemy,
our utensils like wands converting the meal
to pious prayer, our open palms outstretched
bringing the out-of-sight toward front of mind—
and so we movers, we fervent swimmers unified
by one compass making the undercurrent hum
go on and on carving our buoyant arcs of belief
into solid curves that fold outward and shine.

Three times a day I recall that cows
have best friends and keep them close—
feeling deep distress when torn apart.
Three times a day I celebrate the brilliance
of pigs, how swine learned to roll with the dirt
and make it holy, how their whispers with soil
resurface the fertile earth and its secrets—
that an entire species has made of mud
their sunscreen, their soap and cool springs.

Three times a day I praise the sea life scaled
and rising, that schools of fish join forces
to sink the giant nets under. Three times a day
I see that roosters and hens recognize faces,
how they make an effort to remember names;
I see that chicken is not an adjective
for cowardly or fearful, but a noun
for prescience—a verb for sensing
where one ranks in the pecking order
of man-made hell on earth; I see that
their kind serves life sentences for daring
to enter this world feathered and winged.

Three times a day we affirm every animal
deserves the right to a full life worth living.
There is no farm animal but the animal farmed;
there are no dairy cows but mothers whose milk
is stolen, the birthright of calves drained,
marketed, sold for profit. Meanwhile,
the influencers, the smug Got Milk? celebrities
and Big Meat lobbyists and vile factory tycoons
bathe in mounds of paper bile, in heaping
green stacks of filth stained blood-red.

Three times a day we join a growing chorus
exhaling as one to bring the executive towers down,
a grand symphony invoking the voices of animals
dead and exploited, calling out to us, to you
through space and all time—living beings
caged and beaten, skinned alive,
scorched to ash. May their cries
haunt the crumbling halls of capital;
may their pained and precious eyes meet ours
in every night terror, in every waking dream
until one by one we link arms to widen the shape
of justice; until ethics and compassion animate
the masses, the people moving farmed animals
front of sight and mind at long last; until every
pig and bird takes back the lush green meadows
that remember their worth; until the dancing fish
break free and waltz with their crowns into
the regal indigo womb; until every cow
becomes not human but a someone—
someone of dignity,
someone priceless and divine.

-Jimmy O’Hara is a science writer, content editor, and podcast producer for a non-profit cancer organization. By day, he crafts news and multimedia content about promising advancements in cancer research. By night, he’s an aspiring poet, often focusing on veganism, memory, spirituality, climate justice, social conscience, and the non-human animals who have enriched his perspective on the value of life. Aside from writing, Jimmy enjoys live music, bike rides, speculative fiction, and solarpunk art. He strives to do his part in building a just and equitable world for all.

Copyright©2024 by Jimmy O’Hara. All Rights Reserved.