Tag: climate change

The Flood

Sing, madwoman, as the spring harvest

floats down the swollen river and the

saturated soil rejects the falling sky

Sing as adult children carry the sun

beneath their shivering skins

searching for a stolen summer

Sing, madwoman for you built your ark long ago

when you sank in human deluge

and the sadness could not hold

You, madwoman, who built your ark with

broken stories, hull hammered with upturned words,

pulling fallen folk aboard

Cry if you must for this sinking world

but also sing, for you have always floated

while the strongmen have drowned.

After the rain

So, I am wading through a La Nina springtime,

past the mangroves bathing in a swollen river

through sodden fields where puddles have turned to

 pools to reflect

the dusk light sky and grey-pink clouds.

After the rain

I am wading through floodwater

praying for an end to a muscular mind

tightened into

a fist of fury.

All around me, all types of post rain birdsong.

But I listen for the kookaburras, their unhinged cackle calls

like maniacal laughter, and I begin to

Unfurl.