“The people in town talk about the unseasonable weather as if they and only they can.”* As if the world of humanity hasn’t been pillaging and polluting their cadie for centuries. Planet earth groans with the weight of our species. Cracking open treacherous, rain-filled vortices, spewing toxic gases from the underworld as though begging for our attention. The tears of Gaia overflowing riverbanks, melting glaciers raising water levels to destructive depths, all the while we wade deeper into denial.
When hurricanes devastate our neighborhoods we pay attention for a little while then soon fall asleep while others around the globe awaken to their own disasters.
Are any disasters truly natural ones or do we contribute to them all? What cataclysm will it take to awaken us all to authentic empathy for our precious earthly home, its people, its creatures? History does not bear witness to the probability of that awakening but perhaps future avatars will prevail. My hope rest in them.
*Debra Bailey- writing prompt 10-5-16
Mothers Pray, What Else Can They Do?
The color green
Forms a core of strength in cruciform
At the bridge of her nose
She holds her infant
Gently in the crux of her arm
Swaddled there sleeping
Praying for a boy child
Born into a world of hate
Troubled
She reaches for heaven’s gate
Calling down
Ancestors, angels, and grace
To remember him now in this
Space of peaceful bliss
To walk with him
When what it means to be him
Awakens to what others think he is
Swirling violet ribbons into her love prayer
As they answer her desperate call
The ancients, spectral wisp,
Gather around, above and below
Dispelling doubt and tantalizing hope
She knows to teach him how to stand
Means watching him fall
Watching him break
Watching him forget
This moment
“This placement in faith.”
after Dennis Paul Williams’ “Placement in Faith” from “The Road to Indigo”
© 2016 Bessie Adams Senette
THE BAYOU MYSTIC 