2016 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for Peru, Máxima Acuña (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
“This isn’t a cause of fear for me – it’s not a motive for us to stop fighting, to stop defending.” Maxima Acuna(when asked if she was worried given Berta Caceres’ assassination)
Maxima Acuna is a wife, mother, farmer, weaver, environmental activist who has had her home destroyed (twice), has been beaten unconscious with her daughter, has been physically beaten with her husband, and has had false charges laid against her. I really admire her tenacity, strength, and sense of justice in the face of pure evil in both protecting her way of life, her rights and the environment.
Photo: from viacampesina.org “Protracted fight against all injustices.” Protestors in Paraguay drawing attention to the loss of land and human rights in the face of mining and forestry businesses.
“Disadvantages faced by indigenous peoples are related to dispossession and exacerbated by powerlessness and poverty.” Roberto Mukaro Borrero
“Fierce eagles do not produce timorous doves.” Horace
The Drought
45c and the road, straighter than straight, rolling beyond what the rusted sign advised. Blues, liquid, twelve bar, driving through this dry land. Paddocks hollow and stricken, rain forsaken for so long now, nothing holds in this dust. Crows picking the eyes out of everything that ceases to move, that cadaver buffet for pall bearers.
The gates blur in fifth, the barbed wire whispers strained songs of lament and I weep as I pass the delusion of hope trying to bale non-existent hay, the sadness of twenty bales to a hundred acres. And I weep for this place where endings complete and there are no obvious beginnings.
I slow as I see the spectre eyeing emaciated sheep. The angel of death eyes me and I nod in deference, better an ending than tortured horizons. I wave my blessing, thankful that the feathered euthanasia will ease the shepherds pain. In this moment the eagle is surgeon, priest and mourner, holding a ritual, taking death for life.
Rosemarie at dVerse has invited us to write a poem using the word wheat, or any of its derivatives. dVerse Poets – Poetics – Wheat
Photo: wa.gov.au Combine harvester working a wheat paddock in Western Australia.
“In the very end of harvest, scarcity and want shall shun you; Cere’s blessing so is on you.” Ceres – ‘The Tempest’ Act 1V Scene 1 – William Shakespeare
“There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones that the magpies know themselves.” Terry Pratchett
Photo: from hyperactivz.com and the story “Forty Years Ago This Man Planted A
Tree That Created Amazing Opportunities For His Island” by Lauren Fazackarly – The Story of Jadav Payeng who began planting trees at sixteen and is still going.
Please note: this is only one story, there are several stories from all over the world of people doing similar feats to greater or lesser extent.
“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.” Greek Proverb
Every Time
He settled in the dust of his soul,
the sun beating down and
mocking his every effort
drawing his moisture to his brow,
and yet every day he rose and
without fail, made his way
to his field of dreams
that barren canvas of life’s struggles,
of course, without knowing,
passers-by smiled their condescension,
to them he was an eccentric farmer,
while in his own mind he was an
investment banker, and adventurer, a rebel,
and every time he planted a tree he knew
he was painting a masterpiece
whose abstract nature only he could explain.
Linda at dVerse has invited us to take a line from the work of Jim Harrison – “A cow is screaming across the arroyo.” taken from his poem ‘Cow.’
Photo: Pixabay.com
“Moo may represent and idea, but only the cow knows.” Mason Cooley
Advent Herald
A cow is screaming across the arroyo as the weaners are drawn aside. The cattle-hands working the herd, the weaners easily pushed across the arroyo to the feeders like children to a lolly counter. I listened to her screaming, a gut-grief heartfelt, and though I cannot speak it, a warning was implied. Burgers or breeders, the children are consumed. And as I walked reflecting, I wondered about all the herding of life, this arroyo is not the Rubicon, but a die was no less cast.
I came to the creek-line with an angel or devil, I’m not sure, but I left the gate open and the screaming cow dove through. She spoke so clearly as we passed, “Those who lie or sup from the manger will be crucified one day.” Startled, I ran through, I’ve been wandering un-herded ever since, across that arroyo.
“Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.” Henry David Thoreau
The old Farm Gate
I leaned on the old gate as I was wont to do,
and it seemed a good thing,
the gate offered no objection
rather, a welcome to reflect as I
leaned and looked out at all that was before me,
in the dry of the day the rust
like barnacles clung to the wizened steel,
but some flaked and powdered
and I felt its roughness
a reminder of the many winters it has endured
since it was hung in less complicated times
when boundaries were respected and a
gate was merely a choice of
coming or going, to be in or out,
this gate might not make another hundred
but for now it has more stories to tell.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. - Edgar Allan Poe
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. - Edgar Allan Poe
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