In Canada, explorers flock
to watch the icebergs melt.
Tickets cost a thousand dollars,
printed on old growth, smooth and svelte.
They garland the ship with hollyberry
and offer morning gruel,
and, watching the starving polar bears,
do not know that they are fools.
The oxygen is hotting up,
no breeze to fan the windsock,
and if I were a betting man,
I'd say we have hit bedrock.
Look at the pretty white cliffs fall.
Tickets are two-a-penny.
Let's sing a hymn to the 49th parallel*,
for smarts, we haven't any.
Let's sing a hymn to the 49th parallel*,
for smarts, we haven't any.
Sigh. What a ditty to start the day. For Shay's Word List. The climate crisis is always on my mind, the starving polar bears more than I can handle. On the news yesterday: one out of five of every species is now endangered. As we blunder and plunder on.
* The Hymn to the 49th Parallel refers to a song - and the title of a fantastic album - by k.d.lang.
Also sharing with earthweal's open link.
Right on the money, my friend. Fiddling--or taking cruises--while Rome burns.
ReplyDeleteThat photo just breaks my heart. I am just speechless about selling tickets to watch icebergs melt. Society has lost it's way.
ReplyDeleteWho'd sell tickets to watch icebergs melt? Who'd buy them?
ReplyDeleteCruise ships are flocking there - in waters that once were too ice-bound to reach. "Come see the glaciers before they melt." No awareness of what this means.
ReplyDeleteMWA HA HA!
ReplyDeleteOh dear... this is pure disaster. And still no real action, just empty promises while the ecosystem collapses. Sigh.
ReplyDeletePeople are terrifylngly stupid....I am surprised we have survived this far.
ReplyDeleteI’m so frustrated and frightened for my children.
ReplyDeleteShips of the damned, keeping the fires fanned.
ReplyDeleteThe tragic truth indeed, Sherry. Still, you present to us the bleak picture so beautifully, sad though your words are. I hope this is not true? Unless they're charging tickets to raise money to help the cause somehow?
ReplyDeleteNo, sadly, the minute the ice melted, cruise ships started running tours into the area that before now were unreachable and ice-bound. If there is money to be made, fools rush in. NO CLUE that melting icebergs are a complete disaster.
ReplyDeleteSherry, This reminds me so much of that Joni Mitchell 1970 song, "Big Yellow Taxi," the lines "they took all the trees and put them in a tree museum/ and charged all the people 25 cents just to see 'em." I can easily see your musical lines sung as a folk/protest song.
ReplyDelete"Tickets cost a thousand dollars,
ReplyDeleteprinted on old growth" - boom. Perfect.
You are so right...We ignore, spend money, and are blind to the very visions in front of us.
ReplyDeletepowerful and as mentioned above, this is a folk song in the making... very sad!
ReplyDelete