Boiling in Inertia
Posted by Martin Ogle on Jun 24, 2015 in All Posts | Comments Off on Boiling in Inertia
Over the past week, there has been a flood of discussion and analysis about the “Encyclical” on global warming and human life by Pope Francis (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/popereport.pdf). Reading these many and varied sentiments, ranging from solidarity to hostility to creativity, I was reminded of a poem recently written by a friend of mine, Larry LaVerdure.
Boiling in Inertia by: Larry LaVerdure
Between home and the horizon
present needs trump the far off future.
Between the status quo and the
reformer’s vision is a frozen river that
feigns stillness.
Along the continuum from stillness to
motion, there is a drum that beats out the
rhythm of a lost dance, a hidden
doorway into silent summer days where
the sun and shadows play with geometry
on the lawn by the gate;
where a buzzing multitude of insects
cast a spell of an indolent stupor, thick
like honey, like sap on ancient bark that
has collected a menagerie of detritus as
it cascades down the centuries with its
mementos dizzy from the descent into
stillness.
We are stuck in a sepia colored
photograph; like a bug trapped in amber
our dying struggle preserved for all the
puzzled future to gawk at…
Who were these people who did not see
the slow emergency overtake them?
In their moment of peril why were they
unconcerned? What siren song paralyzed
them as they succumbed to the notion
of boiling all their children in inertia?
As it turns out size and numbers matter.
As it turns out everything is connected in
a web of interdependence. We are linked
to each other; living and dying together.
We must see that or all is lost!
Desperately scientist scour the heavens
for a new planet hoping that going there
will be easier than staying here as the
Earth wears out like a garment and fools
insist there are no limits.
Listen the future sings a song of dancing
children, yours and mine. They clamor
over fields ripe with strange fruits: they
share their solar harvest, balancing their
needs with the world’s. Windmills spin
on the horizon. Everywhere there are
gardens and bicycles and fewer but
calmer, happier faces.
A drum is calling out a bouncing beat
and children play amid high heaps
of history-laden detritus that cascades
down the centuries beside us through the
secret door you, their ancient forebears,
found amid the shadows on silent
summer days as the sun and shadows
played upon the ground.
Between the horizon and home there is a
balancing point called kindness.
Between the reformer’s dream and the
status quo there is a time to sow the
harvest while a smaller river of children
flows endlessly into their tomorrows.