Northwest of Sydney. (Lukas Coch/AP, via NPR) why do i do this to myself?
i mean, i appreciate the people, all three of them, who read this verse-chronicle regularly (thanks, readers!) — but what does it accomplish? i feel guilty writing, publishing, teaching climate-crisis-related stuff: it just makes people depressed (more depressed), so nobody wants to hear about it me to climate-poet friend: “what is to be done?” -- thinking they’d have a political- social-economic strategy for climate insurgencies; but the answer was: “be kind to one another” maybe that’s always been the way it is: advances, revolutions, brand new brilliant ideas all led to this. happy enlightenment, y’all. maybe at some level people know this, just want to be made comfortable, enjoy what they can of life while they can but not a lot of enjoyment happening for most of the world. such as eastern australia: n.s.w. rich in rain — six months’ worth in one week (like, 3 feet’s worth, so far) -- 40 k humans displaced; livestock spooked or drowned: “it’s the helplessness of hearing them bellowing because they are obviously stressed, they are very panicked, and you cannot get to them to do anything for them,” sez the farmer; “that’s the real heartbreaking thing. the loss is the loss, and as hard as that is to cope with it’s the helplessness and not being able to do anything.” stressed, panicked, heartbreakingly helpless mammals, four feet or two -- we’ve heard it all before dam overtopped near sydney dropping as much water as water in sydney bay, every day; neighborhoods submerged, only roofs remain to see, towns “cut off”; roads damaged, schools closed, telecommunications, water rescues, not over yet the “floodproof” new windsor bridge, underwater; “people that have lived lifelong have never seen some of those kinds of rainfall,” sez the govt. man, aptly if not well first the brushfires now this — and it’s not even one of those “sh*thole countries” as someone once called them but only two deaths . . . maybe things aren’t becoming more deadly, just more exciting . . . writers like “exciting,” right? plus, somebody has to record the important stuff everyone else looks away from. i reckon . . .
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |