This is a spoken word poem I wrote for Professor Ayana Johnson's class based on a sentence in her book "What If We Get It Right." I recommend everyone read her book to become more informed about climate change and how we can change the world for the better. You can find the quote I borrowed this refrain from on page 429.
We shake our heads remembering…
how we sang inside an incinerator / born breathing
blue and green body, believing
victory is this glass-bottled song
our children will reminisce on...
how we sang inside an incinerator / born breathing
blue and green body, believing
victory is this glass-bottled song
our children will reminisce on...
We shake our heads remembering…
that the cherry-throated tanagers,
massive crystal-iced glaciers
and the tiny spiny dogfish sharks
could ever have been endangered.
We shake our heads remembering…
the toxic smell of plastic,
infuriating fume of traffic,
furtive fast fashion fabric,
and how we almost succumbed to the strange attraction
of aesthetic inaction.
We shake our heads remembering…
that memory, history, infinity? is fickle like woolly thyme
or a rose beetle’s earth-bound drum beat...
i see it now! / when i let my misty eyes sleep:
the change, the bouquet of disarranged bays
saved because we started to shake
our heads…remembering…
that Beauty is the smile of a freshly shorn sheep…
that Beauty is… there in the smogless, sandpipered sky…
i hear the buzz of bikes and giant dragonflies
soaring down, down, down the old highway lines
over redwoods! bluebells! white oaks! and wind turbines!
i see sandhill cranes nesting in marshes next to electric cranes
stacking bamboo planks to build another nesting place…
for people and pigeons, parrots and pelicans, peacocks and paradise
tanagers tripping over abundance!
but what good are names if you don’t remember them?
We shake our heads remembering…
because bullet was just one of many words we re-defined:
we attached it to trains, solar-powered planes and ivy vines
climbing, climbing, climbing the tower heights
now flowering with white lily blossom bites…
We shake our heads remembering
stitching sunflower seeds into streets free
of the cars we managed to bury! –
i barely know what combustion used to be...
or drought, food deserts, overflowing landfills or a rising sea!
We shake our heads remembering…
that we brought the world to a brink
and we had the strength to walk away.
We shake our heads remembering…
because sometimes its hard to move…
sometimes it feels impossible to prove
that we can do anything more than shake our heads
write elegies, sing lamentations, or mourn for the dead…
but…
We shake our heads remembering…
because memory is the first act of movement
the first note in a song, poem, sky dance or the first swirl in a signature…
We shake our heads remembering
because memory is the first necessary act of movement
it carries grief and anguish and funereal regret
but also beauty, recognition, a hint of boldness...
and the idea of a next step.