Climate Change

Do you know there are more living organisms in a teaspoon of dirt
than there are people on earth?

Do you know that there’s more than one documented case
where a sea lion has saved someone from suicide?

And did you know that elephants wave branches at a waning moon,
and magpies lay wreaths of grass on gravestones,
and loons carry lost ducklings on their backs?

Imagine not paving over everything.
Imagine hearing microbes mourning.
Imagine kneeling.

Do you recall our brief shining moment?
Young enough to be ignorant of scorn.
Old enough to steer out of a skid.
Conscious of creation and bursting with vision.

All of us, like birds,
like we were running in mid-air,
dreaming like M.L. King,
many faces, yet a family,
pregnant with generosity,
building refuges for famished cats,
casseroles dropped off at neighbours’ doors,
(our very best casseroles, recipes included!)
carefully attending to our gardening tools,
no less our gardens, our gardenias,
hands held out to the poor,
healers that came to your door,
a mounting abhorrence of war,
an epigenetic thrust toward friendship,
a surging gentleness, as if holy was everywhere
pushing green shoots through crusts of indifference,
and O, those shades of green, too beautiful,
our knees giving out at the sight of it,
angel wings clasping our hearts;
and the swallows returning, the storms receding,
leaving us washed and standing,
owing nothing,
owing everything,
our shame blown away,
our hearts awake and walking
with a humility that doesn’t know it’s humble.

And did you know that sea otters hold each other when they sleep
so they don’t drift apart?