The Cameron Lake fire
outside Port Alberni, B.C.
Jacob Laxen photo
We start out whole,
losing pieces of ourselves
along the way,
and then reclaiming them.
That is the journey.
I am collecting the last few bits,
before I fly into the light.
I pick them up:
ah, there you are!
and add them to my pack.
When I return,
I will change my shape.
I will be cattails,
standing dry, bent and broken
at the edge of the dried-up pond.
I will be wolf-pup,
peering fearfully from my den,
knowing, to survive,
I must elude
Earth’s biggest enemy:
the predatory Two-Leggeds,
and they are
everywhere.
I fear
I will find a planet burning,
from Big Oil,
humans and animals
on the run.
I will be Tree,
gasping for air,
a sudden irradiation
as the orange tongues
lick greedily at my corpse.
I will be deer,
fleeing the flaming forests.
I will be mother orca, holding
my dead newborn calf
above the water
for seventeen days, grieving,
unable to let her go,
saying to the humans:
See! See what you have done!
I will be grief itself,
watching the world I love
burning itself up.
As I am now.
As I am now.
I am already grieving. Due to the Cameron Lake fire, the only highway in to Port and the west coast has been closed for two weeks and is not expected to open until mid-July. Supplies are being convoyed through a rough back logging road. The apocalypse edges ever nearer.
The absolute beauty of the poem is overwhelming... more so because it is from 2018 and 5 years later things have only become worse, not better. What will it take, we have to wonder. Even the wildfires are not signal enough.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rajani, stunning power here laid bare with evolving current events. I read in a news story yesterday about firefighters from abroad fighting the Canada fires, some of them, well, unfightable - what a statement as the boreal forest roars. Yet it only makes the deciders more resolutely deaf. Nothing is enough, and that is the absolute grief of it. Tough that the personal to bear witness to this has the biggest heart. Stay safe.
ReplyDeleteThe pain here is numbing in its scope. What can we do to adequately mourn a world, a paradise destroyed by the grasping, sociopathic greed of the few, while the innocent suffer without defense? Our hearts break along with world around us. Brilliant and painful writing, Sherry. It's hard to find words for grief this big.
ReplyDelete"When I return,
ReplyDeleteI will change my shape.
I will be cattails,
standing dry, bent and broken
at the edge of the dried-up pond." - Wonderful.
The cattails image is excellent.
ReplyDeleteWhat would happen if everyone who loved the land and its creatures could agree that centralizing/concentrating power may not be the way to save them?
Yes indeed, earth's greatest enemy is the "two legged." The image of the mother orca is heart-wrenching!
ReplyDelete