Welcome to earthweal’s lucky no. 13 open link weekend. Specially loaded dice gleam on the felt: It’s your turn to take them up and shake, rattle ‘n’ roil.
Link a poem which feels fit for your mood’s moment, the time (strange and wild for sure) or both, be it new or up from your archival vaults. Include your location in your link and be sure to visit your fellow linkers and comment.
Open link weekend ends at midnight EST Sunday night to make room for Monday’s weekly challenge. On March 30, Sherry Blue Sky takes over the reins again with a challenge she titled FLATTENING THE CURVE. Lord knows, we all have something to sing in the perilous chapel perched atop that uproarious hill!
Looking forward to walking in the wild of your songs.
This past several weeks my wife and I have hunkered down in the lowlands, doing our part to soothe and smooth the bat-virus beast unleashed by a delectable pangolin cowering in a wild meat market. Legacies grow stranger these days, do they not? Stronger too. (And we thought Australian wildfires could have no peer!)
Well, here we are again, torching the drama of a local disaster on the most global of scales, with all of the buffoonery and terror of Feast Night in Hell Kitchen: Surges of infection overwhelming hospitals, makeshift morgues hijacking ice rinks and refrigerated semis, politicians swirling in the surge of events like hapless dwarves (pointing bony fingers at each other with partisan glee), grocery aisles bare as Primavera’s tushie, less and less compassion in the eyes of our daily fellows as this painful exercise demands ever more sacrifice and worry and fear. (Here in Florida, the drumbeat is Stay Inside If You’re Compromised, We’re Going To The Mall.) No one dares look too far down the lanes of consequence because the view is too scary—global recession? what of the poor? the homeless? homeland-less migrants? climate refugees? When will I find another roll of toilet paper?
And if that’s not enough, it’s HOT here in Central Florida today – 93 degrees—which coming in late March portends ever-hotter oceans and the resulting mega hurricanes. (Whoopie.) Researchers are bringing back bad news from the Great Barrier Reef—a third major bleaching event in the past five years. Acre upon water acre of ghostly spines and desecrate ecosystems. And the largest king penguin colony in the world in the sub-Antarctic Crozet archipelago known as Pigs Island, is 1 million king penguins shy of the last count, the result, researchers believe, of a hotter ocean.
The age we call Anthropocene is grim indeed, and the fun is just beginning. Can’t we just order up a different century from the menu of the ages? I’ll take the sixth century AD, please. The year 563—when my spiritual father St. Oran was buried in the footers of the new abbey on the isle of Iona— works fine for me.
In lieu of that, we’ll just have to keep our spectacles polished and keep writing down what we see. In some ways (though none of them so rosily affective), it’s like entering puberty or falling in love for the first time: Everything is fresh and new. Maybe dying is that way, too. Good thing we see the reality only so far down the line.
Now let the linking begin!
—Brendan
earthweal 
I have been watching the States with alarm. Today your cases of the virus exceeded China’s. I have been grateful for Canadian leadership. We are being well looked after, with financial help, and constant updates. There is a strain on the health care system, but companies are rushing to make supplies and help out. Two Canadian scientists are hot on the trail of a serum. Socially, there is a small amount of noncompliance, but businesses have closed and most people are staying in and using social distancing, those who venture out. I stay in as i cant risk it. Numbers doubled in a week. But today the curve flattened just enough to show some improvement. A cautiously hopeful sign.
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Hello Sherry, I have tried several times to leave a comment on your poem, but Blogger sites usually never accept them. I’ll try leaving one here:
Marvelous how water is symbolic for life and earth/sky for that which is beyond, realms we glimpse while of ‘water’ but that we won’t ever merge fully with or know the essence until we are born ‘of spirit’. I see you are from BC. I was so moved by Takaya, the sea wolf near Victoria, and wrote about his teachings for Earthweal. I’m glad to read your poem and continue my contemplation of that watery blue land.
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WordPress and Blogger have incompatibilities. I have trouble leaving comments too but when there is a facebook option, sneak in that way….I see my site doesnt offer that. Not sure how to fix it. Thank you for yur comment. I wrote of Takaya yesterday, whose death broke my heart. I am looking forward to reading your poem. Lovely to see you at earthweal.
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Saturday arrives much like any other day now but, I am grateful for each day. The world is in a crisis. I hope some brilliant scientist comes to the rescue to save us from this ill fated disaster and save us from ourselves. Today, the sky is a solemn gray yet, the birds flutter around full of life, finding mates and soon will make nests to usher in life. There is beauty in that and hope that life of some sorts continues on.
I have been working home and only go out if absolutely necessary. It’s scary out there as we keep 6 feet away from each other as our minds swirl with fear of the unknown. I thanked the cashier and told her to have a blessed day. She said to me “that’s the nicest thing someone has said to me today” We must remember these people out there working so we can get the supplies we need to
survive. All our front line people who are the backbone of our society. I am grateful for them and
all they do.
Be well, Be safe and Be grateful for each day….
peace, light and love to all….
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Hi True, I am staying in too. Bless you for your kind words to the cashier…..they are afraid too, but have no choice but to go to work anyway. I watch the little birds on my balcony. They bring me joy. I am grateful for my online friends and connections to the wider world. And for earthweal. Stay safe!
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Brendan, When it comes to picking a century to live in it will always be one with antibiotics and good midwifes and Obstetricians! A female perspective! 🙂
I’ve left a couple of links. I’m not participating in the weekly challenges at the moment, as getting through the week is currently challenge enough.
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Thanks Kim — you’re probably right, personally so — though I dunno, maybe the species was a little less threatening without all the extra advantages at beating death. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your work here. – Brendan
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W.K. Kortas, your site wont let me comment, it wont recognize me. I really enjoyed your poem. I often have to keep a diplomatic silence, in some company, about what I really think, so I resonate.
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