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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Shifting Baselines



With shifting baselines,
every day another consternation
or outrage of injustice to contemplate,
we become like frogs,
leaping from lilypad to lilypad
in a churning swamp,
too busy keeping afloat
to remember
the wildfires that will come again,
the melting poles,
the warming atmosphere
now that we resignedly accept
without an eyeblink
that we will never meet
emission targets in time.

A torpor of the spirit, a vast ennui,
a resignation falls upon my
once so hopeful heart.
I Become the Observer
of the mad societal dance.
We learn too late
that we must change or die.

The ancestors are weeping on the wind.
The planet turns and burns.
More wild things die.
In quiet moments,
I can almost hear their mournful cries.


for Brendan at earthweal: Shifting Baselines where he astutely describes we humans "frogging the boil", such an awesome description. I can't even wrap my head around the number of deaths from covid. Each one a heartbreak.


9 comments:

  1. The planet turns and burns...
    we become like frogs/ leaping from lilypad to lilypad - beautifully written, Sherry. We really seem to have forgotten climate change with the covid horror consuming us.

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  2. It is unfortunate that one must be resigned because there is absolutely nothing that one can really do. We have some rocky times ahead.

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  3. some humans are cruel, and now the cruel humans have the means to expand on their cruelty. sigh ~

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  4. We need you so to hear their cries. Who is going to tell the young about the ancestors? We so need to preserve those voices in our poems - B

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  5. Your poem echoes is such a sad lament. You sound utterly without hope. I hope you find some things in life that make you feel joy. Suzanne of Mapping Uncertainty.

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  6. So much sadness in this lament. May it be that we wake in time. xx

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  7. Sad, Sherry, but true... addressing climate change is on the back burner now, it seems we are only capable of dealing with clear and present danger, if that.

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  8. Ennui is the right word...it's not really boredom but a profound weariness. But I feel we will all get spurts of energy to continue the work as long as we can.

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  9. Your poem fully expresses the sadness of reality. That photo broke my heart.

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