This Poem is a Weeping Wild Woman

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This poem is a weeping wild woman who hears 

the cries of Mother Earth and her creatures.

This poem is melting ice, starving polar bears, 

burning forests, warming seas, warring armies.

This poem searches earth and sky, looking for hope 

for a suffering planet.

This poem is a wild woman who hears
the call of Raven, howl of  wolf, 

wails of distress from every corner of the world.

What is she to do, with all of this knowing, 

when the cries of the suffering

are not being heard

    are not being heard

        are not being heard?

How many times can her beating heart break

against the certain knowledge that 

the planet she loves is burning itself up?

This poem is watching the poles melt, 

the polar bears grow thin and weak,

sitting on melting ice floes with their young, 

wandering into villages in search of food,

looking at us, in need of help

that does not come.

This poem hears the warning that is not being heeded:

not much time not much time not much time

as mad leaders and corporate greed responds: 

"Money rules."

This poem sadly reflects: 

No jobs, no money, no life, on a dead planet.

This poem cannot contain its grief, 

so sometimes it spills over.

This poem does not want to end 

without offering a note of hope.

It finds it in the beauty of sky and landscape, 

in the shine in children's eyes

- those children who need and deserve a future - 

and in Mother Earth's steadfastness, 

as she follows her endless cycle of rebirth,

giving and giving, season after season, 

in spite of us.

This poem says: 

Money rules, but the spirit liberates,

and lives in hope that we can evolve

from our destructive, warring ways,

and return all creatures to the Garden.

This poem is a weeping wild woman 

in need of hope.

This poem is all that is melting and dying, 

in need of our help. (Not much time.)

This poem is a prayer of vanishing faith, 

living in a wasteland of distress, 

that refuses to give up.

Well. Not an uplifting poem. But the photos of starving polar bears have lived in my head all week. I did not post the one that pierced my soul, to spare you. But it can never be unseen. This poured out in response to my challenge at Real Toads: to write a Boomerang Metaphor poem, as created by Hannah Gosselin or, to write a "This poem is...." poem.

My "This poem is" poem is rather disheartened. Yet, when I look around me at all the beauty, I simply can't believe that humankind will allow all of this to be destroyed. I hope a million Wild Women will run for office everywhere and turn this sinking ship around. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would get my vote in a heartbeat.