Mother Earth,
your clearcut slopes are sliding onto the highway.
Farther on, remaining forests burn.
The heat lays a smothering blanket across town.
Grass is yellow and crackling.
Emergency water restrictions are in effect,
food crops shriveling, rhodos
gasping their last.
A hungry displaced cougar, no where
safe to live, ate a dog at a campsite yesterday.
The creatures are hungry, and soon
we will be too.
My heart tolls sadly at how we have ravaged you,
razed the beauty of your wild lands,
hunted your beautiful creatures to extinction.
And yet life struggles on: baby orcas have been spotted;
the loons still sing softly at Loon Lake,
though algae, pollution, plastic line its its banks.
The world is hotting up, the sun shines down
on tourists blissed with summer heat,
driving frantically to and fro to get
their vacation in, ignoring the struggling earth,
speaking in her many tongues, unheard.
Our souls know we should be better than we are.
The planet spins, we choke on our emissions
and drive on.
My heartsong is an elegy
all day long.
Slowly, and soon more quickly,
we are on the way to
Going
Going
Gone.
I adapted a poem from 2016 for the Desperate Poets' challenge: Desperate Elegies
Wildfires and crazy heat and rains... why aren't we on global pause till we find a way? How is this not urgent? You're right Sherry...we're on the way to going-going-gone.
ReplyDelete"My heartsong is an elegy / all day long." For one whose heart is so close to the Mother's world, the grief I know is rending and unending. How does one still have a heart these days? Nature sings on in its destruction, smaller and fainter every day. You are witness to that, and your elegy carries all of it. Well done and sorry it pains so to say it.
ReplyDeleteThe image of a cougar eating a dog at a campsite is so disturbing. The fact that it will just become a story is even more so. I guess all we can do is sing that grief song best we know how and hold her, The Mother, tight. I know that is what you do and I think it is enough.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff Sherry. It does feel the end of the world sometimes. Those hedonist tourists are here too. What will it take to wake them up? Suzanne - Mapping Uncertainty
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and heart-rending, Sherry, for indeed, there is nowhere to go here. You've read my many poems about the viciousness of heat where I live, formally a normal part of the pattern but now becoming more intense, more lasting, its unrelenting knife to the throat of what lives--now we all get to see it in action. It makes me weep.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly where you are (which is good on the Internet). Islands should be safe from wildfires and might even be able to take a few disaster refugees. We are still having record *low* temperatures here in the Blue Ridge Mountains due to daily rain storms--actually pretty comfortable, though more humid than I like, and *too* wet for crops. If you need to cool down and hydrate, please come out for a visit.
ReplyDelete(And bring printed books--the cafe's new management, would probably want to host a book party!) My town doesn't have a great deal to offer beyond cool green shady places to walk, but we do have those.
Priscilla, I live on the west coast of Vancouver Island in what WAS a rainforest. We never used to have to water anything, there was so mch rain, and fog and dew. Now we are in constant drought - the climate crisis claims another area. The sad thing is that we have some corporate businesses using most of the water resources (same story everywhere) and not paying their proportionate share, while the residents are conserving water usage and paying more. No rain in a rainforest is a clear statement of where we are in terms of climate ill health. Yet nothing much is changing. We are still spewing emissions everywhere. I prefer rain. You are lucky you still have that. The Blue Ridge mountains are said to be beautiful.
DeleteThis poem is really a plea, Sherry! Heart felt and so sad. Awful about the cougar eating a dog.
ReplyDeleteChilling, to the bone. Beautifully penned, Sherry. ( am loving FB photos of your family ... what keeps us going.)
ReplyDelete"we are on our way to going going gone"
ReplyDeleteIt's starting to feel that way, Sherry.
No rain,more forest fires, all that carbon returning to the atmosphere....a runaway reaction.
I don't know what to say about this piece. It's all too true, but so depressing if i dwell on it for long.
ReplyDeleteEric here. Can we reach our souls purpose before there’s nothing left? So much spent in the wrong places, even with(or if) the right intentions…
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad, Sherry. I kind of feel the same as Fireblossom. So hard to think about sometime.
ReplyDelete