Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Vigilance

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." ~Ida B. Wells

Today is World Water Monitoring Day!

 Wednesday, September 18

❝. . . . we challenge you to test the quality of your
waterways, share your findings, and protect our most precious resource. ❞  

 –Philippe Cousteau, Jr.
FOUNDER, EARTHECHO INTERNATIONAL

Allegory of Vigilance, Domenico Tintoretto

“While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.”
~ Abraham Lincoln 

United States Navy

Midweek Motif ~ Vigilance

I started building this prompt around World Water Monitoring Day ~ which is today ~ then widened it to vigilance.  We might agree that youth and community involvement could prevent poisons in our water, but is vigilance always a useful community action?  Would it be useful in keeping guns out of the hands of would-be killers?  In stopping hate crimes?  In keeping treaties?  In guiding media and the internet?  Who should be vigilant?

And when is vigilance simply too exhausting? How much more creative might people be if their attention wasn't divided by constant vigilance?   I remember wondering this during feminist "Take Back the Night" marches in the 1970s.  Now I wonder around issues of immigration and racial profiling. 


Your Challenge:  Create a new poem that addresses the monitoring and vigilance you see as necessary or obtrusive. 

Volunteers from the United States Environmental Protection Agency geared up in their official water sampling gear to show students how they do their jobs. To find out more about water sampling and monitoring visit: www.epa.gov/region8/water/monitoring/

 🔎

In Which She Considers the Water

 by Rebecca Dunham

Flint, Michigan, 2016

The river rushes and beats her
             home. Through phosphate-scaled
plumbing, it veins the walls' plaster
            and water bleeds
orange chloride from the tap. The pipes
            leach. The lead—no
imminent threat to public health—seeps
            and floats like a ghost, silent,
straight from the Flint to her child's
plastic cup. Lead levels peak
            at 13,200 ppb and the pipes moan:
what was done cannot be
            undone. Fill a glass. Hold it
to the light. No one here to see.
(I used this poem without permission, and will remove it if you wish.)

 Watcher

By Natasha Trethewey

— After Katrina, 2005

At first, there was nothing to do but watch.
For days, before the trucks arrived, before the work
of cleanup, my brother sat on the stoop and watched.
He watched the ambulances speed by, the police cars;
watched for the looters who’d come each day
to siphon gas from the car, take away the generator,
the air conditioner, whatever there was to be had.
He watched his phone for a signal, watched the sky
for signs of a storm, for rain so he could wash.
At the church, handing out diapers and water,
he watched the people line up, watched their faces
as they watched his. And when at last there was work,
he got a job, on the beach, as a watcher.
Behind safety goggles, he watched the sand for bones,
searched for debris that clogged the great machines.
Riding the prow of the cleaners, or walking ahead,
he watched for carcasses – chickens mostly, maybe
some cats or dogs. No one said remains. No one
had to. It was a kind of faith, that watching:
my brother trained his eyes to bear
the sharp erasure of sand and glass, prayed
there’d be nothing more to see.

(I used this poem without permission, and will remove it if you wish.)

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

By  Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

  ( Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Honey / Bee )

I Wish I'd Written This

After reading this, I believe I know every important thing about his Bess.

 

Bess

By William E. Stafford 

Ours are the streets where Bess first met her  

cancer. She went to work every day past the   

secure houses. At her job in the library

she arranged better and better flowers, and when   

students asked for books her hand went out   

to help. In the last year of her life

she had to keep her friends from knowing   

how happy they were. She listened while they

complained about food or work or the weather.   

And the great national events danced   

their grotesque, fake importance. Always

Pain moved where she moved. She walked   

ahead; it came. She hid; it found her.   

No one ever served another so truly;   

no enemy ever meant so strong a hate.   

It was almost as if there was no room   

left for her on earth. But she remembered

where joy used to live. She straightened its flowers;   

she did not weep when she passed its houses;   

and when finally she pulled into a tiny corner   

and slipped from pain, her hand opened

again, and the streets opened, and she wished all well.

from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems.

Click on the title to go to poetryfoundation.org's posting of Bess.  Click on the poet's name to learn more about William E. Stafford.