On Being Alive as the Apocalypse Begins (Poem)

Every year in my January Month of Poetry exercise, the group is set a challenge one day of the week to write to a prompt. One of this year's challenges was to take lines from a favourite poem and build a new poem from them. I used the closing lines of Mary Oliver's On Travelling to Beautiful Places to create this one.

On Being Alive as the Apocalypse Begins 

and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go

this ship that we can't get off, now
maybe once we could have
we could have dived off the deck, slick with salt and hard dreams
cutting through the white horses of the glimmering sea
to take our chances with the seals and the sharks
turning our faces to the distant shore

maybe once we could have turned this ship around
or, if not that,
we could have put the matches back in the box
chosen sunsets and fruit and song and touch
over the savage pleasures of power
over watching the world on fire and delighting in our spite
or even just our apathy

the only ship is this groaning, aching ship
rusted up with all the ways we hate each other
and hate the world, and hate ourselves

only the thinnest line of light left
only the softest whisper
only the smallest chance, that this ship

could remember itself and come back to itself
could leave behind the fires and the blood
could set a course instead for the far horizon
could sail by moonlight and the gentle hand of the waiting stars

could find, again, the god that waits
inside the pearl-pink dawn.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: Careless People - A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Image
I have just finished reading Sarah Wynn-Williams' book, Careless People, about her time working with the upper echelons of Facebook (2011-2017). I have more detailed thoughts (see below), but the summary version: it is a very readable and deeply troubling journey through a worsening landscape of dysfunction. I rate it 8.5/10. Caveats : First up, it's Wynn-Williams' memoir, and she paints herself in the best possible light - there isn't much taking accountability for the ways in which she also enabled, and in some cases actively engineered, some of the shadier stuff she talks about.  It's absolutely the case that she was the victim of a lot of truly execrable behaviour and decision-making, but one can be both a victim and a participant in the victimisation of others at the same time. Wynn-Williams was literally in "room where it happens", and her plaint that she thought she could do more good by staying and trying to influence people wears thin once things ...
Read more

The first quarter of 2025

Image
Easter is upon us at the end of the week - for me, it's always the dividing line between "early year" and "mid year". The first school term is done, the first work quarter is passed, and the year is turning, slowly, away from summer and towards the coming cold, but still lingering delightfully in my favourite of all seasons, autumn. Since I returned to work on 20 January, it has been a full and sometimes challenging time, but also plenty of good stuff in it. I've worked, of course, some weeks more than others, and I've travelled interstate for work. Health-wise, I've had the flu (awful); I've been diagnosed with gallbladder disease and have consequently needed to change my diet (annoying); I've had, and have resolved, bursitis in my dominant shoulder (thanks osteo!).  I've read 40 books, albeit 8 of them re-reads on my Agatha Christie project so they probably only count for 0.5 each given how fast I rip through them. I've worried prob...
Read more

Book Reviews: Stella Prize Shortlistee 1

Image
I decided to have a tilt this year at the shortlist of Australia's Stella Prize, a literary award for books written by women in any genre. Past Stella shortlists have included some outstanding books that I never would have encountered but for the prize nomination, so it's clearly working as intended to elevate womens' writing. This year's shortlist is: Translations by Jumaana Abdu (Novel) Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (Fictionalised Memoir) Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A Family Story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi (Memoir / Family History) Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media by Amy McQuire (Non-Fiction) The Burrow by Melanie Cheng (Novel) Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia by Santilla Chingaipe (History) I started with Melanie Cheng's novel, because the premise interested me. I'm going to tackle Theory and Practice next, and listen to the audiobook of Cactus Pear for My Beloved. I have also put paperbacks of both Black Witness and Tra...
Read more