This Poem is a Tired Grandmother

This poem is a grandmother
whose soul has grown weary.
This poem has seen too many
children dying.
This poem is thirsty
for a song of hope.

This poem is a heart that once held
hope as wide and blue as the sky
and as deep as the sea.
This poem once believed
we were better than we currently are.
This poem once dreamed
we would figure out how to live
on this beautiful planet,
with each other and all the other creatures,
in time.
This poem is losing hope.
This poem is a grandmother
whose soul has grown weary.

This poem is a grandmother
who turns on the news
to find children dying, everywhere:
Jakelin, Felipe, Talequah's calf,
Syrian children, starving children,
children shot in classrooms,
while adults cling to their guns
as an inalienable right.
(It is alien, all right.)
This grandma remembers a time
of childhood innocence and safety.
Where has it gone, and why?
This poem has seen too many
children dying.

This grandmother misses the time
when she could look up at the sky
and feel much was right with the world.
This grandmother misses leaders
who had the best interests of the country
at heart,
who had not sold their souls
to money and corporations,
men with clear eyes, and vision,
and an attitude of service,
who could speak in full sentences
and were not clearly deranged.
The dead-eyed and soulless are leading us
over the edge of the cliff, clutching money
to their hollow chests as they fall.
Children lecture us at the UN,
showing more wisdom and maturity
than their elders.
This grandmother needs inspiration,
needs to hear the voices
of women and grandmothers, rising.
She needs to see patriarchy fall.
She needs the transformation of consciousness
to happen soon,
while there is still an earth to save,
for "what we save, saves us".
This poem is desperately thirsty
for a song of hope.

This poem is waiting
for the grandmothers to rise
all over the world.

for my Thursday prompt at Real Toads: What We Save, Saves Us : to pen a poem of social commentary. There is so much needing to be saved. Including us. I'm looking forward to the Women's March on January 19. Hear us roar!

Right now, we have Standing Rock shaping up in northern B.C., where the Wet'sowet'en people are protecting their traditional lands and water from the inroads of the CoastalGasline fracking  pipeline, which would devastate the little territory they have left. RCMP responded by climbing their barricades and arresting peaceful protectors. As always, government backs corporate interests, against the First Peoples of this land.

I am using Hannah Gosselin's Boomerang Metaphor form, that she introduced at Toads in 2014. My next prompt at Toads will re-introduce this form, and I am hoping Hannah may even make an appearance. Stay tuned!