So small a boat
atop so wide a water,
seeing myself reflected two-dimensional
over so vast a depth,
and afraid.
So vast the depth,
so flimsy the timbers,
so frail the hand drawing a ripple,
so transient the ripple,
so insignificant.
Unfamiliar that face
below the hand
dumbly observing
the passing moment;
I let my finger's ripple break it.
.
Kingfisher:
an emission of blue light
resulting from
the discharge of electricity
following the path
of shortest distance
between two trees
along a river
and flaring momentarily
at the tip of the cathodic branch
before termination of the event;
a shy bird.
It seems no government is going to take the necessary steps for environmental or climate change. And until they do, private individuals will feel taking steps is pointless. Change will only occur when there is an atmosphere of emergency as during the Covid lock-downs, right now it’s life as usual for the most part.
It’s not as though the steps are unknown. The production of plastics must be curtailed immediately;
it seems appalling to me that, for one example, that plastic packaging as is used for putting butter and jam on individual slices of bread in the catering industry is a gross overuse that could easily be better managed. Why don’t we go back to re-usable bottles of milk? Why isn’t there a rationing system on air travel for holidaying purposes, on the consumption of meat, on the amount of packaging used in retail, on the unnecessary use of water? Why is their space travel for the pleasure of a wealthy few?
And how mad is prosecuting war, as Modi told Putin now “is not an era of war”. He knowing better than most as catastrophic conditions become ever more prevalent and temperature records continue to be broken.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently warned that the world is “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.” Who, in twenty years time, will thank their parents and grandparents for caring so little about them and their planet that they over-looked such clear warnings and such clear evidence?
In nearly all the lists of what individuals can most usefully do, lobbying representatives comes near the top; they need to feel the fire. Talking about it is also considered vital to build the sense of imperative; the emergency is here, but we’re not all feeling the urgency yet.
Inside the fog of adult worries,
her terrors hulk;
fears beyond comprehension
remain unspoken,
she lacks the words;
her child’s face has the countenance
of a sixty-year-old
with eyes gazing out
from shattered innocence.
She stands as though alone
among the other children
and appears not to know
how to play.
That blackness, beyond the storage boxes,
tins of polish, hoover and copper kettle
was, in the beginning, a solid-looking barrier;
I had no intention of going near it.
Time passed, I ventured further. On my knees
into the space, discovering shadowy discards,
dismantled appliances, things unknown to me, perhaps
from an earlier time and still that pitch unknown ahead of me.
A cave, a bottomless shaft to Australia, to Hell?
Eventually I breached the darkness and found it stopped
right there, wood; a prosaic end to my fantasies,
a step out of childhood.
We walk among ghosts, they are our ether.
Switched to electronics,
we no longer feel their breaths.
Though Earth’s warnings crackle around us,
we stumble onward in science;
tumble backward in empathy to nature.
slowly
our lives become
our own;
as streams,
eddies and runs
settle
into their channels,
we find
our ways
