The Wild Anthropocene

 

Voice of America photo

The voice of the wild anthropocene

is heard across the land, in hurricane,

in flood, in wilding fire. Its force

is felt uprooting trees, flooding towns,

stirring animals and homes

into a mad and muddy porridge.

Birds fall dead from the sky.

Whale bodies wash onto the beach.

A mother bear and two cubs wander the town
in search of food and are killed.

Autopsy reveals, mother bear's

stomach is full of tinfoil and despair.

The planet heats. Across the hot

and burning land, war perpetuates, bombs

add further desperation to people
struggling to survive.

Crazed young men

with assault rifles shoot away

their rage. Politicians and the media
talk and talk, the next

school shooting already on its way.

Nineteen children's families mourn

as we think and pray, and claim

"our right" to not put assault rifles,
once and for all,  away.

And I have to wonder: as we make
a hell of heaven,

is it possible

that the blood and spirits of
all the murdered innocents

are transforming this seething, writhing
suffering earth,

on which we've all gone mad
and lost our way

to holy ground? 
Elusive peace, the plea
in every prayer I pray.

Italicized words are John Milton's. For earthweal: Anthropocene Wilderness. And she is getting pretty wild.