Nov 30, 2017 Original Poetry
Swell
©November 30th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The earth turns herself around
In her sleep.
She is uneasy, and clamorous,
There is pain, pleasure, triumph.
She dreams you into being,
And me, and all her daughters.
Spun from the same stuff.
We, her daughters, look into each other’s eyes,
And we know who stands behind
Those curtains – yes, you, and you,
And I and I, our surfaces stripped away.
All of us, spun from the same stuff,
Even the lying, thieving, enabling,
Hateful versions of her dream,
The ones who tear down their own,
Who line up in droves, to push each other
Aside in their haste to prop up the sons.
Who dreamed up the sons?
The earth turns herself around.
Deep in her sleep, she mutters
A name, but it floats away on
The rising swell of voices
Naming names, damning them,
Those who give nothing,
Those who take it all.
______________________________________________
Tags: #Daughtersandsons, #Gaia, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #RiseofWomen
Mar 31, 2015 Original Poetry
Hum-Ant
© March 31st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Gaea awakens from a troubled dream.
Ants crawl over her sleeping, aging
Rocks, her streams and plumes of
Buried hair and abused bones,
Like carbon unredeemed.
Hum-ants, building anthills everywhere
Tickle, bite, pluck, rip,
Carry on war and kill for fun,
And maim her trees, and
Muddy her waters, and choke her air.
The Titans do her bidding again.
Happy to serve her, they stir
Restlessly, they arise, full
To the gorge with vengeful
Intent, with billennia of pain.
Churning the waters above, blind,
They groan, and grind plate
Against continental plate.
Stretching, yearning, shoving
Landmasses aside, they grind.
All will be changed, all.
Run, for the waters WILL rise,
Or learn to swim.
Run, for the unforgiving sea
Will swarm over our cities
And swallow our cries.
All will be changed, all.
Run, and as you run,
Sing to the crying sky
And the grinding earth.
Sing of your history
As you follow the sun.
All will be changed, all.
Sing the song of innocence
And the songs of knowledge.
Sing the praises of your mother
And forgive the hurtful words
You uttered, and made no sense.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of stirring into being
And careening into death,
Eyes wide, stretched
Wide to accommodate
Light-years of stars, still unseeing.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of hope, of all the shoulds
Of ambivalence and despair,
Of words understood and
Of words misunderstood.
All will be changed, all.
Sing of forests felled for highways
And buildings arrogantly
Reaching for the sky, crushing
Life out of sidewalks, die-ways.
All will be changed, all.
Sing now.
Or learn to fly,
And take off before
That final tidal wave
Envelops us all.
Or, better still, let the storm
Transform our cry.
All will be changed, all.
Disintegrating into atoms,
We shall be simple matter
Once again, a part of
Earth and Stars,
Blown from the palm of
A Titan’s hand, phantoms.
All will be changed, all.
Like stardust, we will blow
Into the void that waits,
We hum-ants will know,
At that final moment,
That from humus we come
And to humus we will go,
For that is what becomes of us.
Human we are, humble, humus.
All will be changed, all.
_______________________________________________________
Tags: #Gaia, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, Climate Change, Gaea, Hum-Ant