I know I said that I would stick with the gratitude thing in November for poetry practice. Well, I am grateful for people who face fire and flood. But I am also impatient with those who do nothing but court further disaster. Thoughts and prayers don’t always cut it. Practical measures matter. I predict climate change is the new reality TV show of this generation. I take no pleasure in being that sort of sour Cassandra.
Climate Change
While Paradise, California burns…
Evacuations make for refugees.
Disasters can put whole populations
on the move – flood, famine, bombs, pestilence
of every description besetting
a massive caravan of desperation.
People just want to survive. Or at least
for those they love to live through complete loss.
Obliteration of past and future
doesn’t figure into the equation.
Knowing the back roads to avoid the jams
will become a strategy, like a drill.
Have your escape route mapped and your bags packed.
The emergency is happening now.
Be prepared. Stock bottled water, canned food.
It’s the apocalypse now on the move –
an End Times kind of drama, The Event,
small lives gone prime time on network TV.
Except for most the series gets cancelled.
Meanwhile, the corporate HQ fiddles
with an arsonist’s delight in the burn.
Copyright © Bee Smith 2018
