WILDFIRES

 

Wild Woman is grappling with
grief, gratitude and bearing witness.
(Gratitude for each ordinary day
of life, because at any moment,
it can change.
Gratitude for the gifts already given,
when the world was still
somewhat sane.)

The climate crisis has been known for 40 years -

by the oil companies too,
but money has always mattered more.

We humans are not the only ones paying.
We have resources, there is help,
we can somehow make our way
through devastation,
even when it repeats and repeats
and governments fail to summon
the courage to act.
We have wheels
to get away to
Somewhere Else.

My heart is with the terrified horses,
running in the hundreds along the highway.
With the bear and deer and wolves, 
babies at their side, born just this spring,
running through the fiery halls of hell -
ourfaultourfaultourfault.

Roads are clogged with cars 
full of humans fleeing,
their trusting loving dogs and cats left behind,
because humans always matter most, it seems,
in this screwed up world,
though the animals are at our mercy (or its lack)
and have no voice, no advocates,
no escape
from the hell we have wrought.

On the news,
they do not share their screams.
But I hear them.

I will forever hear them.

Over 300 wildfires are burning in B.C., and more are burning across Canada, as well as in France, and other countries. Each summer is worse than the last, yet governments prefer to pay to clean up after disasters, after whole villages and towns are displaced, than take a preventative approach ("which costs too much money") though what we're doing now costs much more, and not just in dollar bills.

I write poems about hope. But I am now fatalistic. Extractive capitalism's bill is coming due. And we can't afford to pay it. My heart is with the innocents - the children, the animals, the wild ones, the Indigenous people who have always known how to live with Mother Earth, who only ask for the right to live, who do not deserve to suffer the consequences of what humans (governments) have done.