An Ecologizing Crown of Sonnets

By Victoria Leigh Bennett

(Twitter: @vicklbennett

Website: creative-shadows.com)

Or whether we are grateful for what’s given

Or whether we lapsed in free space, our part

A guess thrown out by slow evolving heav’n.

For we know not what put us here, just when,

And might as well be like all creatures else,

To live like birds, like chortl’ing grackle, wren,

Believing each day’s sun, each worm our pulse.

If anything our spell of ecstasy

Unhinges to return us to the clay

It is to know ourselves the patent thieves

Who’ve put all other lives in disarray.

And to an end foreswearing dominance

Except to aid, we must restore, enhance.

Except to aid, we must cease dominance,

For we are feeble gods, who renovate

But cannot out of nothing ordain chance,

Just only with our test tubes bollocks fate.

How funny yet how apt we sketch our gods,

Our first created lives, to take the blame

Of all we can’t control, to beat the odds

When we have need to plead, call out some name.

The words we use, we hope they’ll meet our case;

When nought do work, well then, “it was God’s will,”

But if they play us true, “we saw God’s face

And He (or She) us chose so to fulfill.”

Manipulating deity’s a way

For us to slack responsibility.

So not to slack, let’s rather choose this way:

“The effort must start here and now, with me.”

If God there be, surely that god would lay

Intelligence on us as rental fee.

That god would put us far below the salt,

For we waste all resources, kine, rock, air,

We use the globe as if it were our vault,

If God’s supreme, our stewardship’s not fair.

It isn’t fair to creatures we share with

To drink their water and pollute the world

As if we could at any time draw hith

Our gods to gift an earth like wool new-burled.

Nor is it any fairer to our peers,

Our fellow pilgrim humans who dwell here.

Our fellow human pilgrims here, our peers

In situations grimmer where they lose

All that they have, of desert, wood, or weir

We cannot leave all them to pay our dues.

Once more there is a space race, too, because

We eat, consume, move on, leave trash behind;

We are the worst of vermin, jackals, daws,

Even animals’ instincts best our ample minds.

The jackal, daw, the vulture, clean up messes,

But as for us, our plastics, oil spills, smog--

All, all our clutter, selfish thought confesses,

And shows the earth with us has slipped a cog.

And if we don’t address our problems now

Tomorrow is too late earth to endow.

Tomorrow will be too late, we see it now,

For ice caps melt, and species die, too soon;

As if there weren’t a choice, we mope and mow

And live disconsolate, cry, out of tune.

When scientists who have the best we know

Speak out, and say our fate will soon be sealed

If we do not engage the undertow

Of our own doing, restore earth, new-healed---

Then some try to debate not how or where,

But if the scientists know truth, or lie;

The doubters challenging, a waste of air,

Since all will die together, sweet or wry.

For all we know, bugs, viruses we fight

Are earth’s solution: send us back to night.

If earth’s solution sends us into night,

To fight, restoring order with us gone,

Then we’re, disconsolate, deprived of light

For our own hands have worked to make us pawns.

There are so many roses still and hills,

So many meerkats, many lions, rich loam,

And horses, lotuses, and singing rills,

It would be sad to thus be summoned home

Into the earth, for where else do we lie?

When all the days and days and nights have passed,

And if there is a heaven, where bestowed

Are all our rights to be there, at the last?

For if we cannot joy in earth’s demesne,

What other heav’n consoles us with its scene?

What other heav’n consoles for earth’s demesne?

So beautiful, so rare, has been our time

However frustrate, or in pain we’ve been,

What better place could pass for the sublime?

It is a strange excuse to say “I wait

For happiness to be when I am dead;

And for the evil things done here on earth

I’ll with god, angels congregate instead.”

If people’s gods are true, expecting joy

At all the matchless gifts of earth’s domain,

And looking for us to combat annoy

With balances made up from fair, soft rain,

With sun, dance, colors bright to take our part,

It shouldn’t hurt to have a joyous heart.

About the Author:

Victoria Leigh Bennett, (she/her). Greater Boston, MA area, born WV.

B.A., Cornell Univ., M.A. & Ph.D., Univ. of Toronto, English & Theater.

"Come for the shadows, stay for the read."

In-Print: "Poems from the Northeast," 2021. OOP but on website: "Scenes de la Vie Americaine (en Paris)," [in English], 2022. Aug. 2021 to Nov. 2022, Victoria will have published 25 times with: Roi Faineant Literary Press, The Unconventional Courier, Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art, Barzakh Magazine, The Alien Buddha Press, The Madrigal Press, Amphora Magazine, Discretionary Love, Winning Writers (requested for 2 newsletters), Cult of Clio.

She has been accepted w/4 works by Bullshit Literary Magazine for 4/23. Victoria is the organizer behind the poets' collective @PoetsonThursday along with Alex Guenther & Dave Garbutt. She writes Fiction/Flash/CNF/Poetry. Victoria is emotionally and ocularly disabled.

You can follow Victoria on:

Website: creative-shadows.com

Twitter: @vicklbennett