Ellesha: (pausing briefly, with a fragile smile as a breath of relief escapes her) I find it refreshing to hear a poem free from the weight of any political agendas! This is a delightful retreat from morality, a bane of many eco-poems.Jules: (raising a skeptical eyebrow, his gaze sharpening slowly) Look closer, Elle. This extols one theme—the beauty of the manta—while deliberately ignoring its appetite. Mantas are essentially feeding funnels vacuuming for whatever drifts in. The choice to sanitize the subject and to airbrush is hunger disingenuous. And omission, chérie, is always political. Isn't convenient to overlook such harsh realities?Philyra: (pushing a lock of hair from her face with a weary sandpaper voice) Perhaps Jules is right. We must learn to see everything as political: the expensive, ethically dubious coffee we drink, the silence we keep, the brands we wear, and, naturally, the crap we write—or refuse to write about. There's no neutral shoreline or exit door from the stage while we are breathing.Andrei: (sprawling deeper into his chair, waving dismissively) You take things too far. Soapbox discourses are boring. Why worry about marine creatures doing what's natural for them? Instead, why not just enjoy a cool beer? (taking a long, slow unapologetic sip of Genesee Light) Politics is just noise in our heads. I’m more interested in simple pleasures unburdened by vacuous intellectualizations.Ellesha: (leaning back, a fragile melancholy flickering in her eyes) I see Andrei's point. When we dissect everything as power plays, something precious is lost. Maybe we need to shed our anxiety, stop performing, and just be—truly non-political.Jules: (a sharp, percussive laugh) Ah, non! We are naturally political animals. Hierarchy is the ocean we swim in; some of us ride the current, others get sent to the bottom at the become and become lunch. Pretending otherwise is the luxury of those already near the top of the food chain.Soo: (entering with a playful rap inflection) And ah… those in powaa, they don’t want us to know that. They loooove when you stay “non-political.” They keep you distracted with pretty wings and cheap beer, while vacuuming the whole sea for themselves. They thrive on your distraction, yeah! Look at Donald Trump: he was a master of distraction, deception, and obfuscation.Elijah: Soo is right: Distraction is the oldest power move in the book. (pausing briefly and gazing at the condensation on the windows in the shop) Perhaps the only compass that matters is: what do you truly hunger for? Notice where your awareness drifts when no one is watching. That should be our true north. Fret not over others; the waves of time will soon forget them, and us as well.
