The Good Ancestor and the Climate Protests

The Good Ancestor

A poem by Daverick Leggett

Every day I walk a hundred years
to the hill where my great, great granddaughter sits.
I carry words of blessing
and reach to touch her back.

But feeling me near she turns,
sad-eyed and heavy with grief.

“What was it like?” she asks,
“when the great whales swam,
when the birds sang you awake,
when the rains came soft,
and the soil smelled sweet underfoot?”

And the blessings
catch in my throat.

On darker days she turns,
her famished face charred, and eyes
sunk in their bony orbits,
burn with curses.

And the blessings
froth at my mouth
with the poisonous
spume of betrayal.

On the darkest of all days
I walk the hundred years
and find no one there.

Let today be the bright day.
Let today be the bright day
I lay my hand upon her back.

And, feeling me near, she turns
and blesses me, saying,

“Your love was fierce enough,
sweet ancestor,
your love was fierce enough.”

The Climate Protests

A poem by Rocky Rex

“Handcuff the wildfire.

Why should we care about the trees?

What did the birds ever do for us?

Dress the heatwave in an orange jumpsuit.

It is probably a fault in the thermometer anyway.

These scientists – what do they know?

Take the flood to court.

It has no business blocking roads, or sweeping away bridges.

What if an ambulance was stuck on the wrong side of the river?

Give the clouds a suspended sentence.

They are trying to remind us that a warmer world has wetter air. They should go and tell China, not us.

Arrest the rain.

How dare it remind us that the climate is changing?

Let’s pretend it always rained like this.

Sentence the melting ice to 10 years in the cooler.

Why does it matter if the sea floods Bangladesh?

And Miami can be the New Atlantis.

The Earth is protesting?

We are not interested – just lock it up.”