There is fire burning
in the world.
Forests are collapsing and crumbling
Ablaze
With human hellfire.
The animals and cultures
of feathered, furred and
Chlorophylled life
terrified, perishing.
The heat rising everywhere
Pregnant women labouring under
the heat
No escape on the beaches
A mobile eruption of heat
Scattering ash confetti
Sanctifying the destruction,
years in the making.
The sacred lands, buckling
Drowned, burnt,
Tortured.
It groans under the weight of
greed:
Made manifest by scarlet flames
The sacrificial fires
are out of control
Punishing sacrilege
And yet,
it is the vulnerable
who suffer the most.
Ancient communities
and barbarised peoples who are hurting
the most.
And I sit here.
I greet the swan family every day,
tripping with joy and wonder
at the sanctity of kinship
and little ones.
On my narrow strip of rubber
within my four walls
I reflect
I try to go inward
so as to help with the struggle
outward.
And I do not do enough
And I cannot do enough.
I find refuge in my breath
and yet,
There are black people
In Minneapolis beaten and oppressed
and the injustice rolls on and on
and on.
I watch the canal
tenderly flow.
This haven of trees, grasses and
animals,
singing, honking, whispering and
breathing,
rippling and ever so, ever so
alive
as these dying days
drag on:
It is a glory.
The crescent moon
Pale
peeks through
our canopy of
tentative, ringing
Covid blue.
Harping On 