Before the Flood
Will we turn colorblind and watch the world fall off the face of the earth?
There’s nothing bright to see after you enter the mouth of a whale.
No flowers to see if they’re as grey as everyone’s souls
as they wander around unattached, as detached as ghosts are from lives.
The end of the after came as soon as it began this time.
And all there’s left to do is hope we’re taking the trip backwards.
All roads lead to Rome, they say. But we don’t want to go there, not
even though the way there too was as clear as the sky hasn’t been in ages.
Some people like long trips, I guess, and the same people love Italy.
And these are who the rest of us don’t follow.
We stand our own ground, softly, so she doesn’t hurt on our watch.
Cause if the ground could speak, she would scream. And here, she would cry.
We’re already colorblind and grey. We turn a deaf ear to her and that’s worse.
The sky is frozen ‘till it’s not. She keeps the hardened pain inside of clouds.
Turns her cold until she cracks. She can’t take care for now, but wait.
All is silent before a storm. And this is before the flood. All is already harmed.
Political Earth
Politics. There almost shouldn’t be a word for it.
It has to with everything.
Different people who ought to have identical rights,
the planet who is screaming out for help
to be treated with respect for what it lets us have.
Countries’ leaders who see nothing
so they reply to violence with violence
because it’s what they were taught
and everybody knows the older generations are right.
It is everything.
Politics is everything.
Tell this to children when it’s all about the ministers,
when the news don’t use the big word for the big things.
Don’t let them draw a mental line between it.
We need to focus on the bigger picture,
but can only help it with the little things.
The Earth is kind to all things living,
but it’s made of puzzle pieces we make problems
that we can fix if enough learn how to.
The ocean rising with the temperature,
the fires set at towns and forests,
the systems changing for the worse,
and pupils dilating and pupils not learning enough;
there is a heart behind every pair of breathing eyes
and that is what our weapon is
when we’re stepping out of the battle fields
and walk into a world that will become what it intended.
It is not about a destiny in darkness
when the choice has always been that of us with a voice.
It’s about teaching this to those not in the know
and consoling the rest of us with reminders.
For Laura Sloth Andersen, poetic worlds are a safe haven when not being able to help the planet more becomes too much. She has had her poem 'Only Colors Left to Breathe' published in the online literary magazine, Moondottír Magazine, and is a poetry editor at Persephone's Daughters, as well as at the online literary journal, Transcending Shadows, where she's also a poetry reader.