Giving Up the Goat

 

Politicians Debating Climate Science
source

For years, the tipping point was
comfortable years ahead,

when we'd, hopefully, be mostly dead.
Oops! My bad, for here we are,

far past the tipping, planet spinning crazily,
us lethargically, lazily,

the kaleidoscope of possible disasters randomly

spitting out storms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods,

torrential downpours, drought killing the woods,

and an Atlantic Ocean as warm as a hot tub,

whose currents are in danger of collapse.
Oh, there's the rub.

And what makes me most desperate of all?

That everyone is still living Their Best Life,

in their big houses and gigantic cars,

as if these problems were simply

a series segment on the news, Not Real,
God forbid we should wake up and feel
the out of control, topsy-turvy Now -

legislators paying glib lip service 
to how
Things Must Change, while

Nothing Does, the fossil gods

still so adored/abhorred.

It is enough to make an elderly climate activist

grow  disenchanted
with humanity, almost bored -
watching the inevitable
cliff edge we are heading toward.
(Is it ennui or catatonia, this malaise?
Help me.
Toss me a kind and hopeful phrase.)

I grow weary. I want to pull up my moat,

give up the goat, stop up my throat,

hop on a boat, (so at least I can float,)

and find a peaceful river
on some misty dawn

to sail away on,
to the heart-knell
we are
going

going
gone.

Sigh. for Brendan at Desperate Poets: 

where we contemplate the Tipping Point, which we clearly passed some time ago while summits talked and talked, heads nodding wearily, only lifting in outrage when Greta Thunberg, age fifteen, talked turkey and said What Must Not Be Uttered - the climate truth that our world is on fire.

(I intentionally used goat instead of ghost, not sure why, unless it is my own form of denial, lol.)

Heather Cox Richardson at Letters From an American wrote a wake-up piece, if ever there was one, this past week. Here is the link. Sobering, urgent stuff about the imminent collapse of Atlantic Ocean current cycles. Yet the urgency to lower emissions is still no where on the horizon, everyone is too busy mopping up towns, fighting wildfires, rebuilding infrastructure - the same entities that thought addressing climate change was "too expensive." Gah.