If you’ve been keeping up with our projects or have read our past blog post, you’d know that recently we held a “walking poetry slam” as part of a larger group of over 50 rallies, hosted in partnership with People vs Fossil Fuels. These rallies are a part of the #EndtheEra campaign, which held a weekend on action between June 9th to 11th. They demand that Biden declare a federal climate emergency, ban fossil fuel leasing and drilling, and end the approval of all new fossil fuel projects. Groups across the country took advantage of the opportunity to #ActOnClimate in unique and powerful ways, hosting educational events, letter writing, public theater, public art, and demonstrations.
We wanted people to be able to see these poets’ works and read them, even after the event was over. So, we decided to post a couple of the poems here! Thank you to everyone who came, participated, and spoke at our poetry slam. Thank you to Andy, Eben, and Aviva for letting us post your work.
Andy’s Poem
I rise and fall as the rain comes and goes
I clash against my partner, the ocean toe to toe
I support the little fish in the many pools with the tadpoles swimming in it.
I am our history
So many people live on me, so many people depend on me
I am the water you drink
So be proud
I am years and centuries of water
Steadily flowing, creating a path
So, drink me and apply my lessons to your life
I extend as far as the mountains of New Hampshire to the ocean off the shore
Your waste and pollution are in me
But that won’t stop me
I keep on flowing and I keep on growing
Because I have places to be and that is here.
Eben Bain – Exiting a Labyrinth
First published in Wild Roof Journal [@wildroofjournal on instagram, @ebenbein on instagram]
They are cheaters, you thought,
when maple seeds rode a gust
over its tiny walls. But you
were on the way in, then.
Now, you set your back
to the center. Now, there is no such thing
as achievement.
There is time to take steps,
for new grasses
to sprout between stones and how
did plants ever seem stationary
whole skittering their vessels
across the minutes?
No, you are the rooted one
or rather no longer soaring
along the arc
the straightaway revs no engine
the false dive toward the center
has lost its pull
and before time has run
the last corridor which is also the first
if for you the where
there are no walls
between anything
in fact you could skip
but for not wanting to miss
one moment with the ground
Aviva’s Poem
I miss the imperfections of a living world
The sun
And the wind
As they pour through the curling veins of the earth
And the infinite plains
Where the blades come alive when god’s eye breaks the horizon
And the woods
Where rotting is not just decay but a new form of life
But the straight edges of society leave no room for interwoven branches
No room for the tomato seeds we planted
No room for the wind as a whistling cantor
Just straight edges
Because we have mastered efficiency
At the price of our humanity
We forget that our nature is one of harmony
We have separated
From the world that cradled us
Who taught us to walk, then run
The unconditional love of the parent persists
But the child has dismissed any attempt at reconciliation
And this cycle of abuse seems unshakeable
Who are we to break it?
But if this is fixed, then something needs to be broken
Our ancestors wrote in a time before perfection could be predicted
But convenience is meaningless in the face of extinction
If we persist
The torch that our ancestors handed to us
Will smolder down to our fingertips
Until there is nothing left to burn but the world
We have forgotten to love her
More than the fire that barely kept us warm
I stand before you as not a figure of pain, but love
For everything we have lost, but also for the future
For the jagged spears of the shells on my cousin’s beach
For the only place where I feel like I can truly breathe
Love for the stream where I sat and wept
Until my eyes were as dry as the riverbed
For the future we must face
For humanity
Creatures of the earth
Not evil
Just lost their way
For the organic beauty of endless, imperfect variation
A messy, damaged, living earth
That is what I am fighting for
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