All of these photos are either taken from my house or from an area within one block of it. These are photos of just one fire and one flood/avalanche that have decimated the area where I live, and they are nothing, I’m sure, compared to the California fires and the cyclones and tidal waves elsewhere on earth.
A Letter from Mother Earth
All the riches you have stolen may be won in vain.
As you exploit my waterways and open every vein,
surely you can hear me crying out in pain?
When it comes to my riches, each madman wants a piece
at the cost of reason, willing to break the peace.
Will there be no ending? Will the warlords never cease?
As you grow one more spare tire around your spreading waist,
the spoils build up around you: the garbage and the waste.
How much plastic carnage will serve to suit your taste?
As you fill me full of chemicals, I become more weak.
Yet still you spray and pillage, hour by day by week.
The death of soil that nourishes can’t be what you seek!
Fluorocarbons, Roundup, radiation, lead––
all the earth’s blind children just follow where they’re led.
Swallowing all the poisons, devouring what they’re fed.
All the bleating sheep, the entire driven herd
do their best to overlook all the things they’ve heard—
every threat of doomsday, every warning word.
The cyclones swirl above you. The fires burn me bare.
How many floods and blizzards will your children bear?
Why don’t you heed the warnings? Don’t you even care?
When it comes to what you’re leaving to your son and heir,
there may be no more water and there may be no more air.
Does this ever bother you? Do you even care?
If every son and daughter voiced their pleas aloud
and questioned all these foolish sins their fathers have allowed,
would they bend their heads in grief? Can they be shamed and cowed?
If they beg and bargain, if they plead and pray,
will parents listen to the ones who’ve been their prey,
or will they keep on throwing their children’s lives away?
Here is the NaPoWriMo prompt: Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
So well written.
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Thanks, Regina. It was a hard prompt for me.. to figure out how to write a rhyme when the words sound exactly the same. This sorta works, I think.
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Such true concerns — the climate is changing, and it’s changing the planet. I’m not sure that I even look forward to the next 20 years
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Oh c’mon. Let’s enjoy them in spite of the bastards.. and just try to vote right and spread the word. Life is life and a true miracle in spite of what mankind does to ruin it. Don’t let the bastards get you down, Janet. I’ll write you funny poems to mitigate the worry……
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Well — my comment was a little more negative than I meant it to be! I am already beginning to suffer from the hot summers — but I can mitigate that with things like a ceiling fan or a whole house fan, at least for a few years. And I can swallow the cost of keeping the a/c on and at a comfortable temperature. It’s the 20th year that I worry about — I will enjoy what happens between now and then! I do love your funny poems, though — don’t stop with them!
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Wow, this is an amazing poem about this terrifying topic.
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Terrifying is right. How can we be such ostriches? The photos are the best, and worst, accompaniment to your words: it cannot be any clearer.
Here is my Shardorma chain for six years in Italy. Yesterday was the anniversary. The grass is still as green but for how much longer?
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Great poem, and very timely.
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Thanks, Dolly.
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My pleasure, Judy
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Is there no end!? Well said, Judy.
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Thanks, V.J.
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