Land and Sea, She Created Them [a poem]

By Ophelia Hu Kinney

And on a Monday*, there came to be wildflowers,
because of course they are a Monday people:
prodigious, pearlificent, angiosperm
(which is to mean they contain within them
multitudes – anther and stigma).
Eighty, ninety percent of what is 
green and growing, so much of which
we take into our human bodies.

And on a Tuesday*, there came to be clownfish
and mollusks and ribbon eels who are born male,
who sometimes, if strong enough, if very fortunate,
transfigure, as expected, and become female.

(And in the afternoon, there hopped along grass frogs,
whose older females at times become male.)

And on a Thursday*, because they take their time,
came snails, whose sexual expression can change
with the weather, with the times, with the presence
of one another. 

If in that, you heard me say, "It can change on a whim,"
I invite you to re-read and remember, sweet friend,
this is snails we're talking about, and every decision
takes too long to be made by what we call
whimsy.

And on a Friday* came and perched a cardinal
blood-red on one side, breath-pink on the other.
And penguins and gulls and snow monkeys and swans
who partner, sometimes for life, sometimes with someone
of their same sex.

And on a Saturday* arose whole ecosystems
who grow in canopy soils, in the strata of clouds,
and that evening – the marsh, the delta, the tide pool,
neither land nor sea, male nor female, light nor dark.

*These days of the week are purely suggestive, not literal

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Ophelia Hu Kinney is the child of Chinese immigrants. She is a mother, sister, and wife who lives on the land of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Her writing treads the rabbit trails of spirituality, ecology, queer and Asian American perspectives, and the practice of awe. Ophelia’s writing has appeared in The Common, The Christian Century, Geez Magazine, Inheritance Magazine, Unbound Justice, Our Bible App, and at Discipleship Ministries (UMC), to name a few.

At The BTS Center, she gets to tell the stories of people becoming more human in a more-than-human world.