Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Can You Hear the Sound of a Heart Quietly Breaking?

 

Fairy Creek
Will O'Connell photo

It is raining and the recycling
is sitting in the blue box on the curb.
The cherry buds look saturated;
I wonder if they will bloom.
Maybe after the next hot sunny day.

In the blue box the recycling
is sitting on the curb.
Another day begins in Clayoquot Sound.
At Fairy Creek, the arrests
will soon begin. Protectors
of Mother Earth will get hauled away;
the corporate criminals will laugh
all the way to the bank.

The kettle sings; another day begins.
As the trees fall in the forest,
so many of us care.
My aching heart is with those
at the blockades,
singing Water my blood,
Fire my spirit,
while my old
wrinkled sedentary self
sits here helpless in my chair,
as blue as the recycling box
on the curb.

"Worth More Standing" the young ones
say. It's true. What price tag
can be placed on the Old Ones
who keep us cool
and give us air to breathe?

It is raining and even the recycling
is blue and sitting on the curb,
like any other ordinary Wednesday.
The days go by; the last
of the Standing People fall,
breaking my heart and
terrifying every displaced
wolf and bear and bird.

Day 7


4 comments:

  1. It's sad when a tree comes down. It really is a home to other creatures and now they are homeless and disoriented. sigh

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  2. There's a patch of oak-thick hemlocks near here I've been pledged to protect if necessary. (Some fiscal conservatives think conservation is a very conservative thing!) I feel the pain, reading this, as my physical pain subsides at last. Could still scramble up smaller trees, but you need a human chain just to reach around some of those hemlocks...All the way down here it hurts to think of Vancouver losing its big pines.

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  3. So heartfelt and saturated with emotion. There can be no price tag on a big old tree. These people who cut them down to accommodate their ugly mansions. Make me sick.

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