WHEN I RETURN

Kelowna wildfires
kelownanow.ca photos

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.

A depressing poem, written a few years ago. It is depressing, watching my country burning, as it has all summer across Canada, and across the North West Territories, where they had to evacuate remote communities by plane. My home town of Kelowna, where I was born and where I raised my children, is battling monstrous fires that jumped the wide lake and is burning on both sides. Each year, we are getting hotter. Governments flounder, responding to disasters. But we are still not lowering emissions. Sigh. We waited too long.

And this morning on the news, I see California had wildfires, a tropical storm that flooded everything and destroyed roads AND an earthquake, all at once. The mayor asks "what next?" We have barely wrapped our heads around the situation in Maui. Climate breakdown is accelerating. Tumultuous times ahead. How does one encompass the grief of watching the world burn?