This being Earth Day, here's a dark and pessimistic poem I wrote last summer.
(thoughts of a story teller on a hot afternoon in July 2013 after reading Wade Sikorski’s book)
“Change unfolds in a linear manner up to a point, entirely predictably, then suddenly the dynamic changes. A small change tips the unfolding pattern, a threshold is crossed, small triggers are amplified, and feedbacks proliferate until a new equilibrium is reached.”
-- Before it is too Late: The Climate Crisis and Economic Development, Wade Sikorski © 2011, 2013
Each day I write:
About made-up persons,
a family long ago,
history in story.
About made-up places
from mists of high Scotland
to prairie Montana.
Should I instead:
Write a made-up future?
Future-history like
Heinlein or Asimov.
About future persons
desperate, surviving,
often not surviving.
Write of future:
Fierce storms, vast destruction
Of drowned coastal cities--
ocean where shores had been
Places cooked, forsaken
in parched, wasteland expanse –
desert where once was corn,
But I do not.
I write from a present
private heaven-on-earth
lost in my own fictions.
Writing, I seek a past,
with lives torn asunder
where yet and still hope thrives.
Each day I write.
Were I to write future
could I write such darkness,
despair I envision?
With lives torn asunder
from rising tides over land,
from scarce food and water;
Where vanquished will become
the food of the victor
who themselves then become
Others’ vanquished morsel
soon becoming as weak
starved of humanity
Where forests burn away,
icecaps melt, oceans steam,
mammal is dinosaur.
To write future
How distant must I look?
fifty, a hundred years,
or even further still?
‘Til civilization
disappears from the earth
by famine and fighting
Until in new climate
hunters and gatherers
become human again?
We are seven billion.
Will some survive on earth
to build a new order?
Is there any real hope?
And didn’t Brin write this?
We have not ears to hear.
We hide from what is real
yet know we have to change
that new hope may yet thrive.
If I write of future,
shall I look further still?
A hundred million years?
Until some new creature
steps from a new Eden
to feast on fossil fuels
Fuels from our extinction
Becoming civilized,
pretense to be like God
Claim to be civilized
toward the creature’s own ends.
Is hope so far distant?
Where some new sentient one
among all of its millions
must write down a record.
Who will write every day
Stories of recent past
Where lives are torn apart
But where hope thrives.
Who asks, “What should I write?
A story of future?
A story where hope thrives?”
Each day I write.
Is mine a dark vision?
Is it an endless void,
or a caution worthy
of the Eternal One,
the Creativity
heart of the Universe?
Each day I write.
Each day I hope.
Each day I write, hope, pray
for my grandchildren, and
the world they inherit.
Each day.
(thoughts of a story teller on a hot afternoon in July 2013 after reading Wade Sikorski’s book)
“Change unfolds in a linear manner up to a point, entirely predictably, then suddenly the dynamic changes. A small change tips the unfolding pattern, a threshold is crossed, small triggers are amplified, and feedbacks proliferate until a new equilibrium is reached.”
-- Before it is too Late: The Climate Crisis and Economic Development, Wade Sikorski © 2011, 2013
Each day I write:
About made-up persons,
a family long ago,
history in story.
About made-up places
from mists of high Scotland
to prairie Montana.
Should I instead:
Write a made-up future?
Future-history like
Heinlein or Asimov.
About future persons
desperate, surviving,
often not surviving.
Write of future:
Fierce storms, vast destruction
Of drowned coastal cities--
ocean where shores had been
Places cooked, forsaken
in parched, wasteland expanse –
desert where once was corn,
But I do not.
I write from a present
private heaven-on-earth
lost in my own fictions.
Writing, I seek a past,
with lives torn asunder
where yet and still hope thrives.
Each day I write.
Were I to write future
could I write such darkness,
despair I envision?
With lives torn asunder
from rising tides over land,
from scarce food and water;
Where vanquished will become
the food of the victor
who themselves then become
Others’ vanquished morsel
soon becoming as weak
starved of humanity
Where forests burn away,
icecaps melt, oceans steam,
mammal is dinosaur.
To write future
How distant must I look?
fifty, a hundred years,
or even further still?
‘Til civilization
disappears from the earth
by famine and fighting
Until in new climate
hunters and gatherers
become human again?
We are seven billion.
Will some survive on earth
to build a new order?
Is there any real hope?
And didn’t Brin write this?
We have not ears to hear.
We hide from what is real
yet know we have to change
that new hope may yet thrive.
If I write of future,
shall I look further still?
A hundred million years?
Until some new creature
steps from a new Eden
to feast on fossil fuels
Fuels from our extinction
Becoming civilized,
pretense to be like God
Claim to be civilized
toward the creature’s own ends.
Is hope so far distant?
Where some new sentient one
among all of its millions
must write down a record.
Who will write every day
Stories of recent past
Where lives are torn apart
But where hope thrives.
Who asks, “What should I write?
A story of future?
A story where hope thrives?”
Each day I write.
Is mine a dark vision?
Is it an endless void,
or a caution worthy
of the Eternal One,
the Creativity
heart of the Universe?
Each day I write.
Each day I hope.
Each day I write, hope, pray
for my grandchildren, and
the world they inherit.
Each day.
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