Collapse
My sister wrote and sent me this poem.
Collapse
by Rev. Mary Margaret Earl
I read that the insect kingdom is collapsing. That the dense eastern woods have been beaten back and defeated. The lawns, endless seas of lawn, are sprayed and pressed into obedience; all real buzzing, bursting, impertinent life stilled into a stretch of green carpet.
The bulldozers clear the trees and fill in the ponds and the frogs fall silent. Lights along the highway, lights in backyards, lights everywhere blind nighttime scavengers, confuse migrating birds; the moths seek the moon and exhaust themselves at street lamps.
Fireflies flicker out.
I read that the living world is flickering out.
And so I rise in the morning, this, I fill the birdbath with fresh water.
I rise in the morning and take a slender shovel and make space for a handful of goldenrod.
I let the milkweed grow and open and surprise me with her purple flowers, her glorious blossoms when once I did not even know that milkwood eventually blooms, if you let her.
Yesterday I watched a swallowtail butterfly dance on the bee balm. There is no way to describe it except as a dance of joy.
I read that maybe the world will collapse.
I rise in the morning, and like the leaf that curves at the edge from scream to song, I plant something. A handful of goldenrod.
I do sing.
This is how I save myself. This is how we save ourselves.
We sing.
We plant something. We love something.
We rise in the morning and begin again.