For the Children of Poets #poem by G.E. Schwartz

 

John Milton and his two daughters, one of whom,
Deborah, I believe, is not looking thrilled with time spent taking dictation,
even if her learned father is dictating Paradise Lost. Artist: George Romney, 1794.

For the Children of Poets

Children of poets, how do you find Your haven? Maybe you escape to

     A cousin’s or some other place? If There are two homes, off and on,

Separately (the parents’), would you Be directed by where you have little

     But private stress to cope with? (With Her mother away, Deborah Milton

Had to be used, by ear and by pen Especially, at her alternate home.

     Imagine, in the dark deeps of night, The blind poet, her father, haplessly

Rounding with a surge of line upon Line till he could bear no burdening

     Anymore, and at four-thirty a. m., The hired secretary ill, unavailable!)

You heard, and wrote: a process by-Passing mind, or heart, I’d guess. Did

     Sister Mary, too, have to learn Hebrew, Latin, other languages, he wanted

Read aloud? Children of dust, the call Can come at harsh hours, disrupting

     The sleep of nature. The voice must Be heeded, the unfathomable words

Forming at best a promise that, in Some way, someday, everything will

     Come into clarity. Warm-hearted Samuel Johnson must have been so

Exasperated on your behalf, saying That you had ben schooled only in

     Alphabets and sounds of all those Languages, not in the words, their

Meanings that might have made all The long hours a little less wearisome.

     Children, sleep well while all time Runs on. Rise, docile, dim of spirit.

Someday someone sometime will bless you for it.

_ _ _

G.E. Schwartz. "For the Children of Poets" first appeared in Dappled Things, and is included in G.E. Schwartz' collection Murmurations (Foothills Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-951053-32-4; www.foothillspublishing.com).

Climate Change and Your Nerves

 Climate Change and Your Nerves

East River Park where 400 trees were cut down
& mulched to make way for an environmentally dangerous development
of fancy apts. Same old same old. [photo by Sarah Sarai]

Last Tuesday my weekly talk group - all of us senior and queer - hit the subject of feeling anxious about climate change - are we?/aren't we? anxious. And our guilt and fear, right-now fear and right-now guilt related to climate change and its inevitable impact on that thing ahead of us: The Future. Did we stop it? No. Many of us, to some degree or another, tried, ie, recycled and sometimes boycotted. If you have tried to mollify the planet or if you haven't, it's coming. We agreed we had the anxiety and probably each of us thought more about the messed up Earth awaiting us. The messed up Earth here and now. That giant iceberg that's about to break free. Birds. Always birds. Often cats, too. 

So I was relieved to read a very relevant article by reporter Ellen Barry in the New York Times (monthly subscription costs $4!). Here's the first few paras from Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room.

PORTLAND, Ore. — It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joe’s, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl.

Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.

She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.

In the early-morning hours, after nursing the baby, she would slip down a rabbit hole, scrolling through news reports of droughts, fires, mass extinction. Then she would stare into the dark. con't.

Yeah. The thought of mass extinction will do that to you.

I would expect that only the captains of industry who push denial like it's soft serve ice cream consider climate change it's a momentary blip. Or believe their fortresses will protect them. Which they won't. God could but God never seems to step in until ten million or sixty million people have been slaughtered. And even then... Anyone's guess. So I recommend you read the article. Here's a little more to bide you over:

It was for this reason that, around six months ago, she searched “climate anxiety” and pulled up the name of Thomas J. Doherty, a Portland psychologist who specializes in climate.

A decade ago, Dr. Doherty and a colleague, Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, published a paper proposing a new idea. They argued that climate change would have a powerful psychological impact — not just on the people bearing the brunt of it, but on people following it through news and research. At the time, the notion was seen as speculative.

That skepticism is fading. Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational.

Again, from the Times.

East River Park...already in partial ruin

photos by Sarah Sarai