This poem is a terrified baby kangaroo
running into the arms of its rescuer.
This poem is a crying koala
plucked burning from a wall of flame.
This poem is a country on fire
where a billion wild creatures have died.
This poem is an inferno, fleeing creatures,
deadly thirst and heat, dried up rivers,
and not enough water in the world
to put out the flames.
This poem is kangaroos
trapped and impaled on fences
as the flames lick closer.
It is the burnt carcass of a kangaroo
caught upright against the wire fence
that stopped his escape.
It is his hundred mates behind him,
burnt to death where they fell.
This poem is the terrified cries
and laments of a billion wild ones,
running, with nowhere to go,
desperate, circling, trapped,
as their whole world burns.
This poem is a climate crisis
with only one way out,
and leaders all pointing smugly
in the other direction.
This poem is a wild woman's grief
with frustration embedded.
It is doing my small bit,
while the big offenders
carry on with business as usual.
This poem is hope with nowhere to land.
This poem is a planet on fire,
with no one to put out the flames.
It is the animals that always break my heart. People have voices and resources, and the focus is always on saving the humans, as if we are the only ones that matter (which is how humans have lived on this earth the last few hundred years.) This one orphaned joey breaks my heart. My mind can barely wrap itself around a BILLION creatures, each in pain, trying to flee and dying.
I am watching the global response and alarm at the coronavirus with twenty victims, and how much news time and governmental action there is in response to the crisis. Yet climate change affects billions and is getting worse, with still no detectable response from the biggest offenders, governments and corporate criminals.
I have always been so hopeful. It is hard to be losing hope.
This poem breaks my heart, as does the photo. Really hard words to read. There is so much sadness and hopelessness in the situation.
ReplyDeleteI know. It is so hard to hold onmto hope.......I see the animals are helping each other - a mother fox let orphaned koalas nurse, an emu herded scared lost sheep.......they seem to have figured out they are in deep trouble and that humans havent faced it yet.
DeleteThis is so moving, Sherry. I read it … and then, I read it again, aloud to Mike. It brought a lump to my throat with the first read and a tear to my eye, with the second.
ReplyDeleteThe climate mess … and the myriad of horrifying ways it is playing out (from board rooms to governmental legislatures to vanishing coast lines and everything in between) is monstrous … and soul crushing.
This is an important piece. You have articulated the situation compellingly and with the deserved alarming impact, this crisis should provoke … in all of us who love this planet.
Wendy, how lovely to read your words, and to know that mine moved you. I have been having a hard time over the burning kangaroos and koalas. I read today that whole country may become uninhabitable. The age of climate refugees is here.
ReplyDeleteA bucket of water here, Sherry, offered to a burnt world ... I wonder how these wild critters almost leap into rescuing hands, what terror and relief causes joeys and koala and bear cubs to rush from their wild aversion to the human into human arms. A blessing for us maybe that they don't know who caused the fires ... What we sometimes don't notice is how lament is lyred in the heart, grief has no remedy or redress without a wounded heart. Who can forgive the coal-mongers now, or our blithe habits? So much more to come, but for now we have to grieve this massive loss. And carry it somehow together. Thanks Sherry -
ReplyDeleteYour words break my heart too Sherry and every time I read it (four times), it adds to my despair.
ReplyDeleteSadly, your closing stanza is the ultimate truth. It seems that there is nothing we ordinary folk can do as our so called leaders turn a blind eye to the bleedingly obvious.
Anna
Does a heart have to break completely so that it can heal? This poem is almost a last straw for my heart. I want to package the carcasses and send them to the policy and profit makers. I insist they not stay remote from the carnage, that they look with all their senses and find both better policies and green investments for their money. Your poem brings me right up close. Maybe, if we can't send the dead, we can send this?
ReplyDeleteSusan, I know. I can hardly stand it. This prompt made all of us want to kill ourselves. I will try to find somewhere to send it, to some of the deniers in australia........the head guy, not that he'd care. Thanks for being strong enough to read it. After I posted it, I watched Valerie Kaur. Thank you for posting THAT as it likely saved my sanity.
ReplyDeleteI cried as I read this poem, it speaks of heartbreak and loss. I can feel your passion for the animals. I am turning into that willow. (sigh)
ReplyDeleteI know, True. The images are so hard to see, the reality so hard to bear. I read Australia may become uninhabitable. Yet the leader is a climate change denier.
ReplyDeleteThis is so heartbreaking. Poor, poor creatures. The leaders will not stop till this home of ours becomes uninhabitable. Oh!!
ReplyDeleteBy the way I don't know why I can't post my comment at first try not only here but on some other sites also :(
So many things that we should be able to solve... but alas I think we cannot just point at the leaders. We are the people who put them in power. We need to convince millions and millions of deniers.
ReplyDelete"...hope with nowhere to land." That says it all Sherry. Until more people begin to wake up and care, everything seems so futile. Perhaps the younger generations who will be so affected by climate change will finally be the ones to begin to put things right.
ReplyDelete"The big offenders carry on." That's the heart of the problem and they won't look up from their money counting until the protest becomes cacophonous. One voice at a time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sherry!