SACRED GLIMMERS

 

The weather's fine, unless you live

where wildfires burn: the flames chasing

frantic humans across the land, the animals

living and dying a terror they can never understand.
It's fine unless you live where storms and floods
are washing you away
from the place you dreamed
you would forever stay.

It got too hot for the crops this year

that shrivelled in the field; not enough grain

for humans, hay for horses, a poor yield.

Rivers and lakes are drying up
from too much heat.
We turn our eyes away;
we keep on keeping on,
on trepidatious feet.

We are still moving forward,
because that is what we do,
adjusting to rapid change,
so scary and so new.

Between the news reports,

that pierce our hearts and make us cry

lie the moments of our lives:

the sweet, slow waking, on a West Coast

September morning, to blue sky,

the waves calling me forth

with their forever siren song.

The tiniest wildflowers

poking from rocky cliffs are whispering:

sometimes you have to just hold on.

There is an apple orchard in my heart,

incongruously, as I live beside the sea.

My childhood resides there, underneath

the blossoms, full of dreams

that did not include all I have come to see,

or how this long, surprising journey

has fashioned me.

It is the sacred glimmers that draw me forth:

sunrises, sunsets, and the shimmering sea,

forests of ancient cedar, dusk and dawn,

the way each early morning smiles "trek on!"

These sacred glimmers are still shining here

as we hobnob our hectic way along,

still flying, driving, consuming desperately,

humming our frantic, existential song,

 an earthly species that does not understand

that we belong.

I am nearing the end of the journey

at the end of the road,

with gratitude for every incandescent

glimmer life bestowed.

I would like my casket woven of seagrass

so that I can all the more quickly pass

into the welcoming, mothering,

nurturing earth, the better to have

a swift transition,

and a swift rebirth.

For my prompt on Wednesday at  What's Going On?  - How's the weather? 

It has been a mixed bag this past summer, where wildfires raged all across Canada and the entire North West Territories. Evacuating towns from the remote north was a logistical nightmare. The graphs show wildfire levels are off the charts. The rainforest I live in has been in drought since February; it has never been so dry. We received 75% less rain than normal this year.

On August 21, California, already fighting a wildfire, was slammed with a hurricane which caused massive flooding, landslides and crumbling roads. AND there was an earthquake the same day. Hurricanes everywhere wreaking havoc, and 2035 and 2050 are far too far away as targets for lowering emissions.

Mother Earth is struggling, and the weather is how she makes it known. May humankind hear her desperate cries. As for me, I don't think I want a re-birth into a burning world. I just needed that line to end the poem. LOL.