This week's Poetry Thursday challenged us to seek inspiration from a newspaper or magazine. As I read this I looked up at the unread newspaper in front of me. The front-page headline screamed North Korea and nuclear tests. This poem followed immediately, without me even having to read any further.
Age of Uncertainty
For all my recycling,
My tree-planting
My volunteering,
Someone could still drop
The bomb tomorrow.
Birds don’t breed well
In a nuclear winter.
I could be quietly
Going about my business
And some president could
Get uptight about some dictator
And there could be some
Kind of retaliatory fire and
Suddenly we’d have WW3
And my Hihi might still not
Have fledged from their nests.
Nothing is certain and that
We will all live to an old age without
Someone deciding to
Destroy us all is no more certain
Than that we will wipe ourselves
Off the face of the planet.
Tell that to my breeding males
As they defend their territories from
Feathered invaders and my females
As they line their nests
With fern. I will sit with them
Rather than worry about
Newspaper headlines and
Broadcast updates.
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7 comments:
greetings from the other side of the world!
ciao
I think it's so cool that you volunteer at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, I visited it for the first (and so far only) time a couple of years ago.
Pip,
I liked the passion in this piece.
rel
really enjoyed this poem as well. Amazing how the clock got turned back.
http://ascenderrisesabove.com/wordpress/
Nicely done. Thanks for sharing!
I know just how you feel..no matter how much we do to improve things it may not matter one bit, we don't have the button..someone else does..
Great poem, and it's so true. It could all fall away in a moment and the best we can do is sit amongst beauty at every opportunity.
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