Monday, October 7, 2019

Blue Sky Tears


When small bears starve
in autumn,
I cry blue sky tears.
This is the time they walk the shore
in search of fat salmon
to gather girth for the winter ahead

but the salmon are not here.

The animals all
have questions in their eyes:
where is food? where shelter?
where, in this noisy, chaotic world,
do they belong?

"This is what extinction looks like,"
the oracle says,
eyes of truth
gazing into our
collective consciousness.
My heart is helpless with grief; 
the governments
turn a blind eye.

Nature is taking the only course
it can,
since she is getting no cooperation
at all
from man.

When small bears starve,
I cry my blue sky tears.


Impulses by Loui Jover  ~ Pinterest


for Sanaa's prompt at Real Toads: October - When Poets Dream, Lament and Sing.

The image above is what inspired my poem, along with the bears, who are on my mind non-stop these days. The song choice is "Somewhere I Belong".

First Nations are taking salmon to the shore to help them. A man on the news said he "prefers to let nature take its course." Nature IS taking its course - the only course it can, responding to what we have done to the earth to create this distress. Sigh.

14 comments:

  1. I assume that when there is no more salmon, no more bears, no more tears the profiteers will whine and sue the nature.

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  2. I fear for our coming generations.. this is such an evocative write, Sherry. Thank you for adding your voice to the prompt 💖

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  3. Blue sky tears - beautiful phrasing Sherry!

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  4. I love how you open and close this lament with the blue sky tears - a passionate plea to heal the world

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  5. Small bears are supposed to fatten in Autumn. No we are doing a rotten job of keeping Nature well.
    Shame, shame
    ..

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  6. This is beautiful, meaningful, and righteously frustrated. Waiting for humans to fix this environmental mess is a bit like waiting for cancer to cure itself Sherry — ain’t never gonna happen!

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  7. I really do not think Nature has more signs to give us. We have crossed the tipping point a long away back .. This poem is very timely and has the correct intensity of your thoughts. Well crafted.

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  8. That starving bear is us only we refuse to accept that. It's also why we let the bear starve. Death in nature's account is a natural thing, but ordained by our policies, it's criminal. Those blue sky tears are filled with what its so hard to honestly say, but you do.

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  9. This touches my heart deeply. I have such anxiety lately. I'm certain it's part of my grief and my helplessness. Your poem is truth and more than sad.

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  10. ...I hadn't heard the bears were starving for lack of salmon. I'll have to google that. I've never seen such a skinny bear... looks so unnatural.

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  11. Perfect description, Sherry! When I saw this image on the Internet my heart bled (sad).

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  12. I cannot look at these starving bears anymore, it hurts too badly. We humans made the problem and now the innocent animals have to suffer.

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