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What if the Titanic disaster was
earth’s early warning system?
What if ice communicates like tree roots,
and the word came back to bite:
Bite now! Let over-reachers know that harm will return as harm, that earth’s surface will act for her as mankind believes it acts for a god.
And so the iceberg drew the Titanic
to her just enough to assert authority
but not enough to kill her—weakness of
design and of command did the rest,
and anthropocentric till the last breath,
humans ignored the iceberg’s point of view.
No one addressed the ice and asked
“Who or what are you? What do you need? How can we share this planet? Let your heart and our gods speak.
Is it possible that some ice, receding
over 100 years later, still waits for an answer?
For earthweal weekly challenge: A CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR ICE
My blog poems are rough drafts.
Please respect my copyright.
© 2022 Susan L. Chast
Amen! I always thought the Titanic sinking was the perfect metaphor for the Anthropocene -- a ship to master every see, sunk by a lonely wandering calf crying for its glacier. How indeed shall we live without those great mothers of our climate?
ReplyDeleteGah! The ice still waiting for an answer, while humanity carries on in its crazed way, as if an entire ecosystem is collapsing. This is brilliant, Susan - the Titanic as an early warning system that was ignored. Wow! A fantastic poem. "What do you need?" A question no one ever thought to asl Mother Earth (other than indigenous people, who already knew the answer, and lived it.)
ReplyDeleteIt really feels like nature has been warning us for a long time now... extinction events, disasters - the titanic is a fabulous metaphor to showcase this...brilliantly imagined!
ReplyDeleteApt Comparison. :)
ReplyDeleteA thought-provoking question. I sometimes think humans must be the stupidest species. "Hey, let's send out a ship without enough lifeboats for all the passengers, what could go wrong?"
ReplyDelete"Hey, let's not do anything about the carbon emissions overheating our world. It would be inconvenient to change anything. It probably isn't that big of a deal anyway."
As my late father would have said, "famous last words."