November Rhyme #10

This weekend the United Nations Climate Summit begins in Paris. The huge march through the rues and boulevards that had been planned has been cancelled because of the risk of mass murder, but all over the rest of the world people will gather in a massive display of concern about climate change. The Sydney event starts at 1 o’clock, in the Domain.

The ‘People’s Climate March team’ emailed me suggesting I share a post of theirs on social media. The post was fine, but I realised that my real challenge is to say something from my own brain. So, at the risk of seeming to trivialise the issue, Sunday’s March is the subject of today’s little rhyme. It turns out that my own brain is full of fragments of other people’s wisdom.

Rhyme #10: Three days before the People’s Climate March
There’s no such thing as a human being,
there’s only humans and everything else:
stars that pull from beyond our seeing,
myriads living in our cells.
The human race has disunited,
Earth’s love for us gone unrequited,
who favour empire, comfort, gain,
and make the whole world our domain.
Saint Francis called the fire his brother,
water his sister. Was he wrong,
or was there muscle in his song?
This time we have is like no other:
last week is gone, next year’s too late,
what we do now decides our fate.