Our Heart
Parker, CO
2020, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I hear the beat of a heart of salt and water,
magma, silt, and seaweed.
Our heart—
Our rain, our tides, our life.
The heart is ill.
Clogged arteries full
Of plastic, a bloodstream heavy
With pesticides and oil.
I wait, breath-bated
To hear it still
A death-cry—
A point of no return,
A loss of that hope
That I, nervously, hold.
What hope? Some seek
A genius, unknown, a certainty
A renouncement of responsibility
This hope is their job,
His or hers,
Never mine, they say.
No, say I, say we.
There is no genius,
No chosen one.
We are all the saviors, we
Are the only hopes we have.
We are the myriad hopes we have.
This heart is ours, ours all
Fading, but audible yet
Overwhelmed with glacier melt
And the heat of the skies full of fossils’
Gas and light, increasing
With the smog and chemicals
Of industry and commerce—
But carried yet by the care we take
The love we show.
Our heart is ill,
But we have the cures.
A bed-rest of renewables,
An IV drip of legislation,
A splint of innovation,
A transfusion of cleaned air.
This heart is ours.
Ours to campaign for,
Ours to legislate for,
Ours to innovate for,
Ours to make change for.
Ours to kill, condemning for profit
Or ours to save, to improve and to heal,
Our heart.
Our hope.
Our all.
Reflection
This poem was originally inspired by my frustrations at displaced responsibility for our climate from those who refuse to change and instead put all their hope in some future generation, while continuing to exploit resources and ignore the problem for profit. However, as I researched and reflected on the efforts and innovations coming from modern climate activism, I saw much more hope for the environment. As I learned, the tone of my poem shifted to become more hopeful, although I still wanted to convey the theme of our collective responsibility for the health of our planet. The purpose of this poem is to inspire the reader to take action themselves, and have hope for the future because they, and others, are actively doing something to help the environment. Hope shouldn’t mean that we do nothing now and think wishfully. Hope should mean the belief that each individual can and should make an impact, and can help transform this crisis into something positive, in concert with many other individuals. Hope should also reflect the many different solutions that I learned about through my research and which each play an important role in improving the environment, and I intend for my poem to convey the necessity of a multitude of cooperating solutions and individuals.