Reckoning

Jan 7 2019

On the other side of the world

Australia burns.

Heat and drought

have turned the dry continent tinder,

its outback torched

soil scorched

cities wreathed in smoke.

So people flee for the coast

hoping the ocean will have them.

Eucalyptus, rich with oil

erupts in pillars of flame,

as animals die

by choking or fire

in their desperate bid to escape.

While those that survive will starve

in the charred and barren remains.

Meanwhile, here in the northern winter

the air is bitterly cold.

There are reservoirs of snow

and the lakes have iced over,

while trees
still draped in green
stand like frozen sentinels.

So according to the law of averages

the planet is well,

a temperate Eden

the first day of spring.

Not the mean

of greed and avarice,

but normal, middling, average.

Yet just a couple of degrees

and the climate tips.

Because if not the law of averages

nor the laws of man

then physics rules

and there will be no appeals or pardons.

A shorter winter, more frequent thaws

an entire continent on fire.

The suffering of the poor

the illusion of wealth.

The reckoning

about to come

even the rich cannot outrun.

In the Australian summer, after years of drought, they're having is a terrible wildfire season. People have died, homes have been lost, forests torched, and millions of animals are dead. The Prime Minister and his party are climate change deniers (or minimizers, since denial is becoming impossible these days, even for the most ideological and irrational) who not only reacted poorly to the actual fires in terms of planning and funding, but were instrumental in obstructing the recent UN climate change negotiations. It is ironic, then, that Australia finds itself at the pointy end of global heating.

It has been pointed out that Canada, too will be disproportionately affected. The Arctic, in particular.

On a very cold night when the news had been full of these fires, I was out walking the dogs, and the contrast was striking: I imagined how it would feel to an Australian climate refugee if he were somehow to be instantly transported here. Not just the peace of mind that fire was impossible in this frozen landscape, but also the shock of a Canadian winter for someone who may very well have never even seen snow. So the first two lines started to write themselves in my head, and a rough idea of the first 2 stanzas began to form. The rest of the poem came the following day.

I pictured that cliche of the man with his head in the oven and feet in the icebox ...and whose average temperature is just about right! But here, a homunculus straddling the planet.