Evolution

I’ve been slowly working away at my poems and short stories from my November writing. The dog I wrote about in the last poem has something to do with my lack of time to work on it, as his physical condition deteriorates. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a way to put together a number of individual projects. It’s not something I’ve tried before.

One of the obvious things to do is to re-read the poems and find ways to improve them. It is interesting how helpful it can be to look at something, take a break, and look at it again, and then again. I was working on a poem I had titled “Evolution” which is also the provisional title of my collection of poems and stories. I suddenly realized that this one poem encapsulates what my month of writing was about.

Some time ago, I was part of an online discussion about the ills that humans have caused in this world. Basically, the things we have done wrong. They might be things that seem normal to our civilization, but they cause harm. Someone suggested to me that I “write our wrongs”. I’ve tried to do that a number of times, to put some perspective to those harmful things humans have done. It was difficult and left me stuck in the wrongs. Then finally I came to this poem, and I knew that this was it: this poem said what I needed to say.

Evolution

I tried to right our wrongs
Separate the organics
From
The toxic plastic
The altered metals
Let the leaves, the stems,
The flowers, the twigs
Return to the gentle earth
From which they grew

I taught the children
Respect for critters
Plastic to the landfill
Used tissues in compost
Open your senses
To the natural world around you
Live in deep respect
For the vegetation
The wildlife
Protect the smallest insect
Honour the plant
Growing in the cracks

I tried to write our wrongs
In a poem
Of critters become pests
Death splatter on windshields
On asphalt
Paradise paved
Of kids cooped in boxes
Sitting at desks
Minds melded to screens
Tar sands and tailing ponds
Slag heaps and coke ovens
Clear-cut forests
Poisoned rivers
But I feared this poem
Would have no end

So I turned to stories
Of humans who evolve
Who stop
Righting the wrongs
Fighting the wrongs
Even ignoring the wrongs
Who discover
The heart-beat of the universe
As their breath is pulled
Deep within
Who release
Their harmful, soul-less life
At the end of their out-breath
Who start
Living from their Soul
The heart of the universe.