Metamorphosis: The Song of Those Unrelenting
Maplewood, MN
2020, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
i. past
as a child i would cry over the lives
of the white bears i only ever saw on television
flickering on a loop in my tiny mind.
i drove rusty canyons into my freckled cheeks over the
notion that to my daughter, those majestic bears, thereby
the beautiful aspects of the world
would only be a myth; a legend that spilled from
my culpable mouth
with my unscarred hands rooted like the pine
two doors down,
in my own Mother’s garden, i
sang my song of woe
ii. present
twice that age now i stand,
and every day i think to myself
how much easier
could this be if i kept my head buried
in the sand?
last winter we,
oh band of emboldened revolutionaries and i
trekked to our home capitol
we sat in circles, sang, and prayed
Mother we will not fail you
not these youth.
we shouted until i knew my voice would be as raw
as the hands of the workers who fell every hour
while the rich brushed their hands on their
trillion-dollar towels
our songs bear the sorrows of the last four hundred years
our signs are the pebbles thrown into an endless cloud of tear gas
“this is what democracy looks like.”
(chorus)
to answer your question child:
the butterfly does not remain in its chrysalis for fear
of flying, she too, has more to live for.
her wings are her signs of protest. her songs are for the flowers.
she knows too well that her time is too short to achieve more
than a passionate affair with the wind.
iii. future
perhaps luck befalls me a few years
down the tumbling road and i meet my brother’s daughter.
i will trace the lines in her hands with salt water. teach her
that it is not the skyline her tiny palms hold, with her
fingers emerging, the jagged teeth of
scorched buildings, like fallen stone giants,
but the gentle roll of the waves as the whale stirs
from his sleep and the
bumble of the bee as
she visits her favorite peony.
she will bury her hands into her Mother’s garden until she
grows into the next blooming branch of the movement.
(bridge)
like the line where the sky clutches at the sea
our song will carry over mountains and cobbled cities
for all our songs are of justice and all
power is to the people, the truth of this plane,
coaxing the unfurling butterflies out of a
resistant’s chest like honey.
i will regale you with stories of the bears, little one
and they will not simply be legends.
they live in the lines in your palms and on the
frozen oceans that are no longer melting nor
rising high enough to sink our greedy costs.
(chorus)
child, remind them where you come from.
the sea, the stars, you are a child of hope itself.
the great butterfly of the universe has
unfurled her wings in your chest.
your life is too short to do anything other than
hopelessly entangle yourself in the winds of change.
Reflection
Reflection
When I was in the fifth grade, I did a project for my STEM class on polar bears and the impact climate change had on Arctic life. As I was immersing myself in all of the literature and resources that I could find, I often felt like the people around me were severely under-reacting. I recognized the threat of climate change as a dire one, and to me, it looked like the adults and people in power around me were not taking nearly enough action. That project was what sparked my passion for climate action, and I quickly became educated on the extraordinary importance of climate justice as well. Through this poem, I wanted to convey the helplessness and hopelessness that it is easy to be overcome by when one is passionate about such a thing as climate change. These emotions arise for me most often when I feel as though the people in positions of power that I look up to aren’t utilizing their influence in the most effective way. But I find hope in realizing that I, too, have influence, even though it may be small. I have the power to share my voice on my social media platforms, through mentoring and the organizations with whom I work, to move towards a more just and sustainable future for our planet.