Tag: climate change

dependence

In the middle of a feverish round of Covid this poem dropped into my inbox (I guess it would be on the 4th July, now I come to think about it): ‘Dependence Day‘ by John Daniel. Struggling as I was with the necessary isolation of Testing Positive, I found the poem really hit home. See how you like it.

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walking with bears (or, seeing while walking)

To be more precise: one bear. On Wednesday I was, briefly, part of a Climate Pilgrimage in which a polar bear and his companion are walking from Shropshire to the Cop 26 in Glasgow. Seeing all ten feet of Clarion the Bear being moved with great care and tenderness along Kendal’s busy main street was profoundly, unexpectedly moving: all that attention being lavished on one, vulnerable creature—he looked so ectopic in the blare and bustle of town—while the actual vulnerable creatures are unprotected. It was simultaneously beautiful and appalling.

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the trees are down

For a few years now, my local council seems to have been on a mission gratuitously to cut down trees. I get that sometimes this is necessary; but the info-about-works relating to one copse up on the fell near my house gave, as the reason for felling, “felling”. Hmm. Another glorious maple on the green was cut down because it was a Canadian maple, and therefore non-native, and therefore… well, what?? So sad. I don’t know if it’s consoling (as in we read to know we are not alone) or even more depressing to find this poem, ‘The Trees are Down‘ by Charlotte Mew, in which the poet laments exactly the same thing. (There’s a rather good reading of it here.) It was written almost exactly a hundred years ago. Plus ca change.

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