Tuesday, May 31, 2022

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. 

5 comments:

  1. Powerful writing. Apocalyptic! Sad!

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  2. "full of tinfoil and despair." - nice anthropomorphism, permits reader to sympathize with plight of the bears. The final stanza of the poem is intriguing; and, seems reminiscent of certain scriptural passages, in addition to the quotation from Milton.

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  3. A mad Earth anointed with the blood of its murdered innocents - roused to kill off homo sapiens, its aggressor: or teach the species to unlearn mastery with its own monster.

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  4. mad and muddy porridge... perfect description of the mess we've made.. of earth and climate, minds and opinions, lives and livelihoods...hard to find any optimism these days.

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  5. "talk and talk" --so very cheap and so very expensive.

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