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Thursday, January 10, 2019

Wordy Thursday with Wild Woman: What We Save Saves Us

Jakelin Maquin, age seven


Just as Talequah the whale  increased awareness of our environmental plight and how it impacts other living beings, this little girl, Jakelin Maquin's, death in the custody of the U.S. Custom and Border Protection in December put a human face on the suffering of those fleeing violence, poverty and death in their home country. For those arriving desperate and exhausted at closed Mexican-U.S. borders, there is no welcoming hand, just greater despair.



Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, age eight


On Christmas Day, we learned a second child had died Christmas Eve, an eight year old boy from Guatemala. His name is Felipe Alonzo-Gomez. 


On January 19, women will march again, as they did in 2017,  a Women's Wave organizers expect to sweep the globe. "We march for her," a spokeswoman said, of seven-year-old Jakelin. "We march for Felipe."  They will march for the thousands of children at the border. They will march with the Parkland activists, with grandmothers tired of our long history of patriarchy and social injustice, with the young,  frustrated by the environmental disaster they are inheriting, and for you and me.

I am heartened by the 100 women who were elected in the midterms in the U.S. Time for women's voices to rise, along with the men who support them.





As we ponder the beginning of this new year, what is our best hope for 2019? Let's use our voices to dream a better world for the children. We need grandmother wisdom - and indigenous wisdom - as never before,  to begin to live respectfully on and with Mother Earth and all of her creatures. Including each other.



For your writing prompt: Pen a poem of social commentary in free verse or form - whatever thoughts spark your muse, in contemplating  these issues, whether an elegy of sorrow for the children, or a paean of tattered hope for all that needs saving. For what we save, saves us.

Whether we march or don't march, we can join our voices to those working hard to birth a better world. I look forward to reading your poems.




15 comments:

  1. I hope this prompt isn't too gloomy for you, kids. Feel free to take it in a light direction. Lord knows, we could all use the hope!

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  2. Thank you for this prompt, Sherry, not that I need reminding. Every day I read the news and despair. I took my inspiration from an article written by Yvette Cooper, one of the few politicians I admire at the moment. All the others eems to be embroiled in Brexit.

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  3. Thanks for diving in, my friends. There are some refreshingly plain-spoken women , newly elected, in the U.S., who are telling it like it is. So wonderful to hear some truthful words.

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  4. Kim's poem brought me here, Sherry, though it's been long since my feet felt the garden floor. This is an amazing prompt. "What we save saves us" has always been true. We're writing and walking and some inches of change occur on which some great event will turn. I know it. We ready the ground. And, the priority is the children of every single species. The children must grow with all the tools their nature allows. With humans, that means carrying and incorporating ideas, feeling empathy, having agency. Thank you Sherry and Kim. Thank you Toads.

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  5. Thank you for your wonderful comment, Susan. I know you work very actively for social justice and I so admire that. We do what we can. And as poets, we write.

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  6. What we save saves us...I think there is more to this than social commentary but you have made the prompt. I had a brief haibun set up to add and then read the social commentary part. So sorry Sherry. I will not be posting but a most interesting prompt.

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  7. Please feel welcome to post, Toni......it need not be social commentary......i did say to write whatever sparks your muse from this invitation. I am very unexacting. Smiles.

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  9. Gah, I should read the preceding comments before leaving mine!

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  10. I may have gotten a little too dark with my post this week to IGWRT... a little too real, sorry if I bummed anyone out.

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  11. Rob, i appreciated your poem. So many kids have lives like that. It is inspiring that the boy in your poem recognized school was his gateway out and up. So many kids go under in similar circumstances. Thank you for sharing it.

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  12. Thank you for this well-timed topic, Sherry.

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  13. Hello everyone, am hoping the holiday season was kind and gentle to you. Am sharing a poem on a topic that's very important for me, how society is dealing with the transcommunity. Sadly, in many ways, we're failing and falling behind the advances, made over the past 2 decades.

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  14. Especially in Ontario, though blighted consciousness is clearly everywhere. Thanks for your poem, Therisa. It is an important one.

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  15. Thank you, my friends, for the wonderful poems written in response to this somewhat ambiguous prompt. I am heartened by each one of them.Truly poems do have impact, and the power to reach hearts and influence and inspire minds. It is what we can do, when it often feels like we can do little to effect change. Onward, pens aloft!

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