WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

Today I want to share a poem I wrote after shopping for Thanksgiving supplies this weekend; a shopping trip which first involved making my way through a new maze of construction pylons, dust and trucks to catch the 54 bus to the grocery store.  While navigating through noise and traffic chaos, a line in an Emily Dickenson poem comes to me: "whistling past the graveyard"-- I add, and whistling by climate change.

Next. I wonder how much Co2 is emitted at just this one intersection in Toronto?  A new poem of my own begins:

Whistling past the graveyard of climate change--

What doesn't want to be heard in the silence?

Maybe that it's 75 warm degrees in October--

In the northern hemisphere.

I think of the looming election south of the border.

Long gone are the suffragettes who won the right vote.

We'll see if they can ever win the U.S. presidency?

(pause, deep breath)

I chat with a young woman cashier at the local grocery store--

She tells me she's training to be a teacher--

I tell her, "that tells me everything I need to know about you."

She says, "that's amazing, you should be a speech writer."

I tell her I was.  Her eyes grow bigger.

She shares they had a mock election for students last week.

"What politicians did you work for?" 

I say that was between me and my "MeToo" NDA.

I can feel her young mind working,

"Oh. OH.  I get it, I'm sorry," she says.

How can this interaction be joy?

But it is-- it is SO MUCH joy.

On my trip home from the grocery store,

I notice the small church graveyard.

I'm not whistling past it,

Or any others this weekend.

I'm changing call-signs.

Thanks be to God.

Cb
Amen

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