plan or precaution, making dead zones though we are capable of life.
| mongo mondo midday at midway, sun glares plastic trashed, beached, busted bottle caps, broken lighters, brittle shreds in feathered corpses heralded by the hula hoop & the frisbee, this funky plastic age spins out unplanned aftermath, ongoing agony mostly unseen, brilliant in the midst of daylight polestar shines on, guiding proper motion tortoise, albatross, crab & dolphin pod brace against onslaught: how long will it take the clan to learn? convenience not worth cancer’s long soft leak into lungs, brains, bellies distended, grotesque imitations of feeding hidden hunger can’t be satisfied by junk tossed after one use, to be carried by wind & waves into random access memory through online photographs into inhaled weather, ingesting hormone scrambling seafood trapped in massive ghost nets, angry flails are human, yet won’t get us out concerted cutting, strategic to the source, might avert our own disposal |
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| the wonders of being several | |
| belt a bivocal ditty to honour the micro & the macro as symbiotic bacteria outnumber our juicy cells ten to one surrounded & surrounding, we persevere through this episode called industrialization among microbiome evolved with skin & lips, maw & gullet bacteria buddies swim throughout adapting & absorbing wiggling & digesting sugar, protein, fat the yummy stuff but furbished with furans they kick up a fuss break rank, revoke immunity broken lines get parsed back into a cycle where the big eat the small but the small eventually eat the big humble ends become modest beginnings thank the great decomposers quiet multitudes within as unsettlers excavate like there’s no tomorrow so much short-term gold, long-term arsenic short-term bitumen, long-term cancer short-term packaging, long-term polyethylene for germs to reorganize |
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| declaration of intent let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured before the extremes of drought and flood overwhelm the careless water is a sacred bond, embedded in our plump, moist cells in our breaths that transpire to return to the clouds that gave us life through rain in the rivers & aquifers that we & our neighbours drink in the oceans that our foremothers came from a watershed teaches not only humbleness but climate fluency the languages we need to interpret the sea’s rising voice water connects us to salmon & cedar, whales & workers its currents bearing the plastic from our fridges & closets a gyre of karma recirculates, burgeoning body burden i hereby invoke fluid wisdom to guide us through the toxic muck i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater & glaciers listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry in its chemical composition & intuitive pull i will learn through immersion, flotation & transformation as water expands & contracts, i will fit myself to its ever-changing dimensions molecular & spectacular, water will return what we give it, be that arrogance & poison, reverence & light, ambivalence & respect let our societies be revived as watersheds |
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because i am part of the problem i can also become part of the solution
although i am part of the problem i can also become part of the solution
where i am part of the problem i need to be part of the solution
while i am part of the problem i can also be part of the solution
one part silt one part clear running water one part blood love sweat
not tar but tears, e inserts a listening, witnessing, quickening eye
broken but rebinding, token but reminding, vocal buck unwinding
the machine’s gears rust in rain, moss & lichen slowly creep life back
the rate of reclamation is humble while the rate of destruction blasts fast
because we are part of the problem we can also become part of the solution
Who are we? We are the beings who need clean water in order to live a life of dignity, joy and good relation. Maybe you are part of “us” without even knowing that you are. Maybe we are the ones who are too often taken for granted or ignored, the quiet witnesses to atrocities, greed, mean-spirited hierarchies, hostages of capitalism. Maybe we are remembering what it means to respect water, because doing so is to respect ourselves, our shared, fluid vulnerability, our funny contradictions, our stumbling, dancing, crying, laughing, eating, drinking, pissing, working, playing, burping, farting, messy selves. Maybe we are the thunderstorms that precipitate when too much has been repressed, the weeds that refuse to stop, the coyotes, the grandmothers, the yet unborn. Maybe we are flash floods, demoralized workers, the hospitalized, the angry entitled children who don’t even remember to thank the water that keeps them alive. Maybe we are system change as well as climate change. Dripping & spitting, we rise.
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fresh ancient ground
“Since 1978, over 14 billion dollars
have been taken out of our traditional territory.
Yet my family still goes without running water.”
— Melina Laboucan Massimo, Lubicon Cree woman
“When you can’t trust the water, it’s terrifying”
— James Cameron visiting the tar sands
can the water trust us?
chasing temporary jobs that evaporate
like so much acid rain drifting into Saskatchewan
“overburden removal” leaves poisonous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pah
the pahs stink – swallow them and die a slow cancerous death
those who don’t respect the magic of ice
are doomed to melt it for their descendants
as miles of living medicines made by rivers over millennia
are unceremoniously eradicated, annihilated, wasted
everything leaking everywhere it wasn’t meant to go
rainbow in the sky or on slick oil
held captive by toxic water, undrinkable yet thinkable,
blistering fish inside out, thirsty children sickened
caribou killed by omnibus rampage, eliminating water
from legislation in the federal abdication of responsibility
what is the language of decay & how can we not afford to learn that dialect?
350, 398, 400, 450 as the outer count changes the inner one
we walk for healing the scar sands, in a living pact with the bears, the eagles,
the muzzled scientists, the beavers who’ve built dams you can see from outer space
step by step, we conduct ceremony for those who don’t know any better or don’t care, broken whole, waiting for our sisters & brothers to catch up with wind, sun & water
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