Give Me This One Small Moment of Joy

 

Ottawa Citizen photo

Truckers at the border are protesting,
demanding "freedom from tyranny"
otherwise known as health mandates
designed to keep us safe.
They carry upside down Canadian flags,
Nazi and white supremacist flags
and dance on the grave of the unknown soldier,
hang placards and upside down flags on 
the Terry Fox statue, talk about their freedoms
while trampling on and preventing
their fellow citizens from exercising ours.

The west is facing off against Russia
and soon we might have more to worry about
than whether we like masks and vaccinations
and health mandates or not. 

Don't even get me started on the climate crisis
and what extreme events we will live through
this year.

But this morning, it is still peace-time.
My village is moving through its usual routine.
The Parks people are adding topsoil
to community gardens, plying their rakes 
and hoes and shovels with enthusiasm.
Light is coming earlier and staying later,
and a new puppy with blue eyes
took a treat from my fingers 
with great interest, one small new being
slowly discovering a whole big world 
of interesting smells and sensations.
(May he be safe. May his so vulnerable
and precious life be blessed.)

Give me just these small moments of joy
and I will make it through the distressing news,
deplorable human behaviour, and 
the resulting state of the world
that we are, together and individually,
co-creating. (May we be safe. May our
and Mother Earth's so vulnerable
and precious lives be blessed.)

Sigh. I never thought I would see Nazi, confederate or white supremacist flags in the streets of Canada; never thought our polite society would become so horribly uncivil. The police force sent aggressive militarized police in to terrorize the peaceful protesters at Fairy Creek - crushed their cars, hurt them, teargassed them, arrested them painfully. Yet police seem afraid to arrest people or tow semis that are blocking the roads and highways, harrassing shopkeepers who were forced to shut down their businesses and malls, thus inhibiting the civil rights of others. 

Ironically, even were Canada to remove the requirement for vaccination passports at the Canada/USA border, the US requires them anyway. So it is  a moot point they are making. 90% of truckers are vaccinated, so though numbers involved in the protest look large, it is a small percentage of Canadians. Of those, there is a group of extremists, racists and white supremacists, some carrying guns, who have infiltrated and encouraged the protests through false information online.  The trump cult is alive and well in North America, I am sad to say.

The movement is deplored by the trucking association and the majority of truckers, many of whom are prevented by the convoy from doing their jobs.

I am discouraged at the way humanity is developing. But thanks to puppies, green things poking out of the ground, increased daylight and the glorious sky-scape that keeps me Looking Up, I am weathering the disintegration of society and the accelerating deterioration of the climate as best as one can on the edge of what looks very much like anarchy, and the cliff edge of a coming apocalypse. Stay safe, fellow humans. 

Inspired by the poem "Give Me This" by Ada Limon