Tuesday, July 16, 2019

silence is not the answer


If our grandchildren asked of us
Where are the polar bears & lions
And the bison, elephant & caribou
On the plains of red dust
Our leather shoes shiny as sun
What do we say?

If our grandchildren asked of us
Where is the ocean of whales
And mountains with green firs & oak
The blue lake with whooping crane
carefully threading for her catch
What do we say?

We ride along in our new cars 
counting loyalty points, likes & followers
We have no seeds to burrow
only garbage & tons of cheap clothes
We ply away this blue & serene sky
for plastic, smoke & towering condos

If our grandchildren asked of us
Why we are gifting them a dying planet
Will we hear the birdsongs, hoots and grunts
from long lost creatures 
and recall the smell of freshly picked apples?
What do we say?



Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - On Climate Crisis hosted by Anmol (alias HA).

For more information, see link here:  Climate Change, What can you do

9 comments:

  1. Goosebumps as there is no answer without weeping.

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  2. I guess the only thing we will be able to do in the future is to show them photos of nature on our smart phones!! How sad indeed!! Great poem Grace!

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  3. The detail in this is beautiful. all that amazing stuff, and we sit on our smartphones looking at videos of idiots. Just looking out of my window I can see a dozen small miracles.

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  4. Good question, Grace! Do we have enough time to come up with something before our grandchildren start asking questions? Many who are old enough are asking them already and the arrogant powers that be are ignoring them. It could be that we will be taking animals, plants, views, memories of the Earth, to the grave with us. All that will be left for future generations is a record or what everything looked and sounded like, but no tastes, smells or sense of how they felt, the motions they evoked.

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  5. Disney will show them the new Lion King film.

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  6. Such a powerful question, Grace! And the way you have worded it is so eloquent — your title says it all: "silence is not the answer".

    "We ride along in our new cars/counting loyalty points, likes & followers": That is such an apt description of this modern lifestyle.

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  7. These rhetorical questions make me sad. Sadly, silence will be all that remains.

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  8. Stunning. I love how you broke to the reality of our selfish ways in the third paragraph and returned to the grandchildren's question....one that should make us hang our heads in shame. I truly believed we've let technology and greed evolve us into oblivion.

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