When I think of the world my granddaughter will live in if we don’t save it, I fear and try to hope.
The losses may seem small but will be grand and devastating.
This post also appears in slightly different format and with more links on my personal site as part of “The Future of Nature” which is an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem.
Here’s my hope:
School
Remember promise
in giant red doors
you saw
while your knees shook
at the edge of the playground
with book bag and lunch pail, cold
from the thermos of milk? The sound
of the future
in the creak of the bindings
of black and white speckled notebooks?
How hope smelled in the wood
of sharp yellow pencils?
Remember how long red
margins ruled
down the side of lined paper
you titled “My Summer Vacation”
and you learned
at hard desks
how to write
in narrow white spaces of weather, and clothes,
and long days at the beach—
not of skies bursting color
like peaches and plums
or birds’ feet on sand
like the sweetness of time.
watercolors by Mary L. Tabor
Mary Tabor writes:
Beautiful, and poignant, Mary. You are a conjuror of worlds. The red door, speckled notebooks, yellow pencils. The lunchbox cold from the thermos of milk. Above all, the promise. Your watercolors are gorgeous. Thank you for this.
Lovely, Mary!