In Times Like These

CTV News image

A two year old girl
sitting on a bench 

chatting with her grandma
is killed by a loose brick
falling from eight stories up,
and landing on her head.

Not enough tears in the world
for times like these.

A native man stops
by a dead mama bear 
at the side of the road,
to lay tobacco to assist 
her spirit journey,
and finds two small cubs 
in the bushes,
waiting for their mama 
to wake up.
One has a length of tire rubber,
tossed by some careless human,
coiled around his neck, 
caught on a branch;
he struggles then goes limp.

The man revives him, 
mouth-to-mouth.
Wildlife Recovery takes 
the small cubs in,
but this one doesn’t make it.
On the news, the remaining baby
stands on tiptoe,
peering through the bars,
wondering where 
       his brother,
            his mama,
                 his wilderness 
have gone.

Not enough tears in the world
for times like these.

In my daughter’s yard,
a mama deer with a broken leg
and one small fawn
has taken shelter.
Likely she was hit 
by some fast fool zooming along 
the winding country road.
Wildlife Rescue isn’t returning 
calls for help;
mama hurts, 
the fawn grows hungry.

Not enough tears in the world,
and so I pen one more poem
for all small creatures,
bearing witness, with heartache,

to say I see, I care,
about how difficult it is for mothers
to keep their babies safe
in times like these.

CTV News image

For Sanaa’s prompt at Midweek Motif at Poets United: A Poem to Weather Uncertain Times. I am also thinking of the children at the southern borders, on concrete floors, as distressed as this small bear at what has happened to their worlds.

There is a news video about the small bears, if you click on the link. Tears are the only appropriate response to watching the evening news any more. We all need to slow down and become conscious of our fellow creatures.

I am reading Once More We Saw Stars, a memoir by Jayson Greene, about the death of his small daughter, hit by a falling brick. A heartbreaking read, but with hope by the end.

An excerpt: "I understand....Greta would be literally everywhere. Her love and presence would blanket me. She would be flowers, bees, sky, roots, dirt, frogs, water. And so would I.........I become Greta, and Greta becomes me. The two of us are soil cupped in the palms of the world."

available here