Rachel Hawkins-Crockford
Lament
this is where we end
on any given day in March
everything else wiped
from the headlines
begin the lament
for the end of the world
make a list of all the things
you might have loved and lost
Orca swimming in Auckland harbour
Fluorescent reefs off Amidee Island
Blue Maumau running like
liquid silver on top of the sea
Otter in a river in Northumbria
the twelve hundred year old Spanish chestnut
listen
do you hear her leaves whisper?
fuel the wind
that fans the angry fire
let the thought take hold in you
of all these lives
go where it takes you
the lament becomes
boiling magma
fury pain powerlessness
fire in the depths of your belly
lie down there on that scorched ground
become a line in the rock
invisible to the eye
after
when all is dark and still
when your children wake in fear at night
get up and dry your tears
before they become the ocean
get up and tend to them
wrap them in safe arms
offer courage beside their bed
begin again
Commentary
This poem arose as a response to the lockdown at the end of March and the way in which Covid knocked everything else out of the media spotlight, particularly climate change and ecosystem collapse. These things that had preoccupied my little household over the last year or two when we went on various marches and school strikes. Suddenly, it was Covid, Covid, Covid all the time and nothing else in the media anymore. It sometimes felt as if the world we knew had ended and maybe there was a sense in me that this was a good thing. That things as they had been needed to change.
That was a time that felt both frightening and hopeful. It was some months later that I submitted the poem for workshopping and I’ve amended it according to some helpful thoughts I received on it. I’m conscious of how different it feels to amend and read it now, after months of getting up each day in the face of a global pandemic, holding out hope in the face of the unknown, finding things to be grateful for and going to bed at night only to do it all again tomorrow. Less of the fire and magma that was there at the start, more of the daily grind of living through such enormous disruption and hoping all one loves will be safe and well at the end of it.
