Greenpeace photo
I started off trying to write a Kyrielle, each quatrain having a repeating line, for Kerry's prompt at Real Toads. But as I began writing, I needed more than eight syllables per line, so I expanded beyond it to see what would happen, and wound up abandoning the form, and striving for the intent. The form's name, Kyrielle, took me back to school days, singing the Kyrie Eleison at Mass. Especially on Easter Sunday.
The Old Ones are falling
to the sound of the saw.
Mea culpa, Mama, mea culpa.
Your watersheds are polluted,
mountainsides laid waste.
Mea culpa, Mama, mea culpa.
The lungs of our planet
are burning up.
The tundra crumbles
and the icebergs melt.
The ocean is dying,
its creatures diseased
and we are responsible
for all of these.
Mea culpa, Mama, mea culpa.
Wild creatures wander,
hungry and displaced.
Their habitat is encroached,
their hillsides defaced.
The environment
is devastated, all laid waste.
Mea culpa, Mama.
Humankind is disgraced.
I love that you took the idea and allowed it to lead you to the poem that wanted to be written. Man has much to seek forgiveness for!
ReplyDeleteThe waste and dying of oceans and nature are very sad. And what is even sadder is until now we don't say mea culpa, mama ~
ReplyDeleteI love this poem! We as a global community have not done what we need to in order to clean our home. What once was considered Sacred is now laid to waste. Pity! Thanks for sharing such an important message!
ReplyDeleteDarn it. So sad because it's so true. Man is killing everything now at such a rate of knots that it will be a miracle if anything is left alive in the oceans within the next 15 years. I had thought it would take a heck of a lot of years for mankind to destroy this planet and all of its creatures, it just goes to show how wrong we can be when it comes to man seeing to his own 'I wants' and endless greed for more.
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad because it's exactly what we are doing to every living thing on the planet, even our own fellow man for one reason or another, too.
You may not have kept to the form but, you sure packed a punch in what your muse asked of you to say.
So sad and true. I love this poem.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you were not dictated by a form that did not work for you, but adapted it to your needs. You had a message to share, and you shared it well. Humankind has a lot to learn.
ReplyDeletei hope this doesn't sound trite, i don't mean it to be. this poem, sherry, has a similar message and feel as (the book of) The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, and that is a good thing. what we have done! and the consequences spiral forward. love this, thank you for writing it.
ReplyDeleteOh you've done something wonderful here...and I love it! Just so well done, glad you didn't let the form hold you back because this is stunning!
ReplyDeleteand humankind is redeemed as we stop participating in these activities, supporting its economics (every little bit counts) and call the crimes crimes as they are. so very well done. you have an ancient voice that resounds.
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