Ode to the Ocean, Who Remembers 20 Years

A new study led by scientists from the University of Liverpool analyzed the “memory” of the North Atlantic and created a new framework for understanding ocean memory. They discovered that temperature fluctuations persist for a full 10 to 20 years, which is much longer than current models predict. – Darren Orf, “The Ocean Can Remember 20 Years, Study Says”

I am sixty percent water and tired. The ocean holds almost all
of earth’s water and never stills. Even in its darkness,
the galaxy’s wetter, no less mysterious twin records orbits
and sends objects hurtling through its space. How large and
cavernous that aquatic brain must be to remember how

to retain its energy for twenty years. All this remembering
without a calendar. All this remembering without
a single sticky note. Memory is a type of holding,
an embrace, so I wonder if that’s at play when the water
curves up and over the bodies of the things in that dark,

thrashing womb, pulling humpbacks down again, afraid
of forgetting the curves of their bodies, or the barnacle
constellations dotting their hides. See how the pelican glides
on his wide carpet wings into the watery produce aisle
and plucks a ripe, ink-filled plum-of-a-squid into his beak,

mumbling a pardon me as he grazes the spotted back
of a whale shark vacuuming crumbs of creatures into
her stomach’s hungry black hole. Unbeknownst to her,
a congregation of crustaceans gathers on the seabed around
a bonfire in her cousin’s sunken, split carcass, the same cousin

who once shared a beer with a pod of dolphins and won $20
for kissing a sailor’s dog on her curious wet nose. The octopuses
remember that dare, but the dog does not remember, divorced
from the ocean, much like me, who fails to remember what I
ate for breakfast an hour after I’ve left the table and discarded

the plate in the sink. My memories sometimes leave me
like seafoam. I hoard a pirate’s cove of sticky notes, bury
doubloons of birthdays and lunch banter, afraid I might forget
a book title or the curve I made by accident when writing
the letter s. Is it any wonder that sailors mistook manatees

for mermaids? I think it’s the forgetting that scares me more
than the not-remembering, time eating through the ship’s hull,
seawater wetting my feet, and I have to patch the leak
before I’m swallowed. The work is hard. I get disappointed
in myself and turn to distraction, decorating my nightstand

with conchs and coral, tying discarded feathers
around my neck. I take a picture of a green seagull
and commit it to memory because the ocean
will wash away the paint, and no one will believe me,
not even myself.