I Wish I'd Written This

The Angels Are Angry

They’re looking down rueing.

They see us, we can’t hide, they know what we’re doing.

They’re boiling, they’re blazing, they’re gazing askance

at the chaos below. In a Shiva style dance,

they’re dancing in anger, dancing in joy

the terrible joy of the power to destroy; 

to lay waste the puny constructions of people; 

to laugh in derision around the church steeple.

No thought or reason. We’re heaping up treasure

that won’t last, we can’t use, and don’t stop to measure

the damage we’re doing to Gaia, our mother;

the air and green places and water we smother

with slag heaps and rubbish and foul noxious gases

and concrete and houses and masses and masses

of more of us, everywhere, proliferating

in careless abandon and blind, driven mating.

Now under this anthropogenic assault,

the elements, seething, rise up in revolt

with earthquakes, volcanoes, and holes oozing mud,

collapsing of coral reefs, wild, raging flood.

We’ve had cyclones and bushfires, intense conflagration.

Soon rising sea levels will inundate nations. 

The message we’re getting is not very cryptic.

It’s obvious, out there. It’s apocalyptic.

Already we’re seeing our just retribution

for all of the laying of waste and pollution.

Robber barons plunder Oz

pillaging the land because

we let them! Politicians in their pay.

Better not get in their way.

(Though write to them anyway!)

And pray to the Angels! Maybe they

can stop the rot and save the day.

Say, “Oh forgive us for we should know what we do.”

                                                                           
– Robbie Wesley

Obviously this is a performance piece. It positively sizzled when I heard it at a recent poetry reading. More of that anon.

Robbie lives in my town. A few years ago, I kept bumping into this woman all over town, at events such as a series of old Australian films shown at the library, or meetings of groups interested in looking after the environment. So we started saying hello, and exchanged names. 

It was no great surprise, then, when I went along to the Wisdom Circle, a discussion group which is a sub-group of the Goddess circle I belong to – and there she was. I burst out laughing and exclaimed, "Oh, of course!" Now we see each other often within that circle. 

I knew she wrote, but only recently discovered the full extent of her poetic talent when we both recited in the "open section" of a local reading (as mentioned above, and in Sherry's latest "Poems of the Week" feature). This was the poem Robbie performed on that night, with great gusto. The audience – fully engaged and interacting appreciatively all the way through – responded with thunderous applause. In fact it was the hit of the night.

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed, and love the verve, passion, and wonderful rhyming – especially "cryptic" and "apocalyptic". She SHOUTED "apocalyptic", throwing her fists in the air.

(Perhaps I should mention, in case anyone hasn't caught on yet, that we Aussies tend to refer to our country as Oz – nothing to do with the land of the Wizard.)

Robbie tells me she has been writing since she was 10, and has had a few pieces – stories and poems – published in various journals, but nowadays tends to need other writers around her so as to inspire her to keep doing it. To that end she has lately enrolled in a writing course at the local Community College, so I'm looking forward to seeing and/or hearing more of her poetry in the future.

(I took this photo of her. Couldn't let all that colour go to waste! The backdrop is a wall of artworks by the mutual friend whose home we were in. Incidentally, it is common where we live for people to take off their shoes when entering someone's home.)

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.