Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5

April 25, 2021

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is Earth Day, which is celebrated on April 22.

I welcome comments on my poems at https://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Part 5 of an Earth Day poem depicting the eventual destruction of the environment and the more environmentally friendly civilization that will follow, inspired by The Fifth World at https://thefifthworld.com/:

Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5

I dance the dance of the hawk.
I am the hawk, hovering over my prey,
Diving, diving to clutch it in my talons.
I am my prey, struggling to break free,
Knowing the terrible fate that awaits me,
The frightening fall when those talons let go,
The painful shock when I hit the rocks below,
The sharp beak shredding my dead body,
The delicious taste of my meat in the hawk's hungry craw.
And I will hunt and be the prey of others,
Dancing, dancing, in a dance that for this moment
Is completely all that I am.

I ride the wind over a narrow canyon.
A slender radioactive river twists painfully towards the sea.
Below me the canopy stretches from coast to coast,
From pole to pole, green islands in a swollen ocean.
The poisons still seep out of their decaying containers.
The Earth swallows them, embraces them, cooling, cooling,
Healing, healing for the next hundred million years.

At night, above us, the stars once again tell their stories,
Once again guide us on our journeys, reveal their beauty.
Once again our spirits sing in harmony with those around us.
Life itself is music, is dance, is grace, is a thing of beauty,
As it once was, as it is again, as it will remain forever.

© by Nicholas Gordon

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/winds5.html. For more poems for Earth Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/earthdaypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Earth Day.
April 19: One Wishes Earth Were Not So Decimated
April 20: Endless Earths
April 21: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 1
April 22: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 2
April 23: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 3
April 24: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 4
April 25: Windsong for a Healing Earth: Part 5