Going, going, gone

source

Where is safety
when the Arctic is melting
and Siberia is burning,
when the Pacific Island nations are under water,
and governments are deaf to mounting crises?

Starving polar bears and displaced black bears
wander into villages and are killed.
Whales grow thinner and die; 
they lose their young.

And humans driven from their homes
by things they cannot help
are met with no welcome anywhere.

For now, safety lives in 
our hearts and our homes,
but when will the waters rise for us?
When will the food run out?
Will we care then,
when our homes are washed away,
and crisis comes to our own village?

We are sadly lacking world leaders
strong enough to put planet before profit.
Women, guardians of life, 
would make the tough choices,
if we we were given the chance.

Patriarchy and capitalism have 
plundered the earth.
The poles are wavering under 
the burden of their melted ice.
Where is safety when Siberia is burning
and the polar ice caps are melting?

Gone, with the old ways of 
caretaking the earth, and each other........
gone like the hot lick of wind off burning tundra,
gone like the whales,
the bears and all the dispossessed,

           going, 
               going, 
                   gone.

**********************

Sorry, kids.

I have always been stubbornly optimistic and hopeful. I used to be irritatingly so. But I have a strong sense of justice and,  truly, as I am watching all that is happening - and all that is NOT happening - I am very discouraged. My words and my hope are drying up. I am grateful for the beauty surrounding me; we must appreciate what we have while we have it. But I am very nervous about what is happening up north. 

The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate, which will be hastened by the burning forests of Siberia. Those in power now are not equipped to handle a response to all this, especially once worse crisis hits. They aren't even faintly interested; it's business as usual (substitute "greed and corrupt power").

My last faint bit of hope is for the 2020 election. But it is faint. The 2016 election was manipulated; of course the next one will be too. He can apparently get away with anything. 

Well. This is depressing. But it is what poured out with the word "safety". None to be had anywhere - especially for hungry bears and displaced South Americans. 

A mama bear and her two malnourished cubs were unable to access their usual forest route, as humans had blocked it off. They wandered into a neighbourhood in Coquitlam last week. They were not acting aggressively. They were FLEEING wildlife people, trying to find their forest, when they were shot dead. Wildlife officials said the bears were "not cooperating" - should they have stood still for their execution?

Locals who were yelling "Don't shoot the bears!" were ARRESTED and their video of the shooting confiscated. (Bravo to them for speaking up.) EIGHT bears have been killed in Coquitlam in July. 

I have such a big problem with the killing of displaced wildlife. It is not their fault they have no habitat. We are too many.


for Susan's Midweek Motif at Poets United: Safety. With my apologies for all that has gone so wrong on this beautiful, suffering planet. Not sure who I am apologizing too? God? Mother Earth? Wildlife? Immigrants seeking safe harbour? All of the above.