Tag: Climate Action blog series

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Chalice, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Dear Earth, you are a sacred aqueous Isle
in a dark and endless sea of universe.
You may never reveal your strategy.
We may be  bound  by  genetic code
to the presupposing chemical destiny
of one great astrophysical master plan
for all living things. We, who represent
your malaise,  your chronic infestation;
we,  like a fleeting itch in your long life,
will never comprehend it.  But, in truth
you know too well  that  we can never
understand more  than one percent
of all there is to know. You contain
the knowledge that is beyond us.
We are but a rash on your skin.

One day, we know you will
raze all of our delusions,
prepare us for the day
when a blinding light
will  inoculate  you
and inform us  of
a moment when
extant humans
will, at last be
prepared to
distinguish
the  l i e s
f r o m
truth
and

so
we
a r e
m e r e
a t o m i c
p  a  r  t  i  c  l  e  s
inside   a   temporal   chalice

© 2014 John Anstie
All rights reserved

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

Moon Child, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Once in a while you exceed yourself.
Are you blue, because we thought no more of you
as the driving force for life on Earth
or potency behind the waves of bitches and whelps
giving us thrilling moments or contemplative
of a thriving, muddy, salty, riverine universe of life
waiting for you to draw the tidal covers
repeatedly over the fruits of our sustenance.

A force of nature, fully formed
yet so much smaller than the mother of your birth,
you hold sway, in countless ways
you touch our lives and drive us through our days.
Humble, unassuming, even unnoticed
by those who hurtle, mindlessly, and make no time
for the wisdom of our insignificance
or feel the difference between our age and yours.

As necessity tramples over truth
most days, we hide in fear of the darkening,
of the madness that ensues.
Does not the hunter choose your waning dark
to spike the nervous memory,
remind us of the feral wolf pack?
We may not ever tame you, but
your mother is dying a slow and painful death.

Oh super blood blue moon,
does not your God and our God sing the same tune?

© 2018 John Anstie
All rights reserved

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Planet Speaks, a poem by Carolyn O’Connell

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016, courtesy of Operação Hymenaea, Julho/2016 under CC BY 2.0

“We’re fighting for soil, land, food, trees, water, birds. We’re fighting for life.” – Gregorio Mirabal, Indigenous leader and coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA)

the Amazon burns! No one
quells the fires
air; knowledge is lost in the fire.
Waters run polluted! No one
seeks to free fish
or children drinking poison.
Air spins in cyclones
destroying all under its twisting cloud
flooding the earth.
Metal is used to make war
peoples flee
are called predators by those who’ve only known comfort.
Are we but people
whatever language colour, creed
we came from one source?
But will expire
in our own detritus
unless we care for our planet
which will spin
into the void of extinction
unless we care for it and others.

© 2019, Carolyn O’Connell

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Return of Primordial Night, a poem by Jamie Dedes

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.” Naomi Klein (b. 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of capitalism. On a three-year appointment from September 2018, she is the Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

the ghosts of our parents search vainly 
for wildflowers near the beach at Big Sur

they were deaf to the threat in thunder,
but we were struck by lightning,
heaved in the rain and waves and
the overflow from the melting ice

the computers went down
their screens black as the wicked water,
in whirling chaos they morphed into drums

every fetus turned in the womb,
the men went to the mountain tops
and the women sheltered in caves

the souls of saints and sinners
were run through a cosmic wash cycle
after the spin dry, a new wisdom

but the shades of our parents remain,
they’re waiting for us at Big Sur,
waiting by the Santa Lucia Mountains

© 2013, Jamie Dedes

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

Shadow Cycles, a poem by Sheikha A.

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“What use will money and wealth be to those who possess them when the rivers and land are poisoned, the seas devoid of life and the air polluted beyond tolerance?” Luke Eastwood, The Journey: Exploring the Spiritual Truth at the Heart of the World’s Religions

Autumn falls on lids
of summer as brown kohl;
dust sticks to formica – dim
laminates – dreary clouds

not heavy enough to pour,
sun sleeps without sheets,
stars bulge like heat-wombs
ready to expel – air bites

like bugs-scratched land;
necks of trees on blade of axe,
green silky bands of crowns
shorn – barks planked, piled

with their withered parts; dry
weeds irrigate soil’s uterus,
roots stoned like cracked clay;
dusk smudges like mascara-

tears, rooms bleak from
smog – homes invaded by
carbon – moon drowns in
a sea of smouldering char.

© 2019, Sheikha A.