inspired by Phil Hall’s amazing poem “Blurbs”
To travel is to enter the space of others and to walk among them an other.
To be invited to read in a large city across the country from one’s own, a gift and an opening.
…but the forecast for my once rainforest island, often called the “wet” coast, is sun, some cloud, no rain, all the way into late October. Past Thanksgiving.
Any one place, only one voice. If I stay here, how will my voice travel?
I want some accolades. My books to sell. To be read. But the airplane: flight from YYJ to YYZ is 12 metric tons of CO2 per passenger.
One hour of Zoom videoconferencing or streaming emits 150-1000 grams of C02.
If only – the act of writing a poem were a simple act: to place my hand in the hand of another; to emit nothing but fragrance (ink from dried flowers), texture (paper made from chewing and dried in the sun). Or just my voice.
I’m thinking of the cumulation of CO2 over time. Each flight could be the flight that does it: the burn that burns. Leads to the desertification of an African nation. Flooding in India. The loss of the elephants. Loss of rain on this west coast.
Hyperbole is a form of metaphor. Possibly also fear mongering. Climate Anxiety is tangible.
Next summer my family will fly to the UK. My dad will be 84 at that time and his final sibling 87. We will go for as long as we can. The valves of our hearts will pump each bump and burn, each takeoff and landing.
Trains in Canada are old and emit as much CO2 as a flight.
Either travel or don’t. Either breathe or travel. Either feed the world or travel. Either save the polar bears or travel.
I love to travel. My book is called Book of Places. But there is something sitting, a creature, between Covid and Climate, holding me here. Also in a #twobookyear The Last Show on Earth.
Recently, author and radio broadcaster, Bob MacDonald spoke of the already existing technologies to solve the CO2 and warming issues. Why are humans so slow?
I’ve lost the poem (I thought I was writing) to facts.
The fact is: many people don’t care.
The fact is: Many people do care. I am not the only person reconsidering flying. I am not alone.
The fact is I’ve just talked myself out of flying to Ontario to do two readings.
Zoom me in oh planners and organizers. Let my voice come and my body stay.
Avoid the car, avoid meat, cheese, butter. Avoid the clothing drier now that the sun is sticking around these short fall (short-fall) days. Avoid gluttony too. Raise your fist to the 1% (many are not thinking).
Avoid hope. Though this week I heard the term “non-naïve radical hope.” Hold that.
Avoid sloppy sentiment (the howl of the heart).
Did the Prime Minster recently fly back and forth, back and forth for photo ops? He’s slightly younger than me; about a year behind me in age. I assumed he’d do better. I thought his relative youth would make him act more, what? What am I thinking? This is full-on naïve wishful thinking-ness.
I hold a book of poems in my hands. It is another human thing. In my voice are the voices I carry within: of doubt and wisdom, climate change and fear, strength and vulnerability.
Bob MacDonald says that our gas cars use 20% of the gasoline and the other 80% just burns into the air. He said picture putting only $20 in and then holding up the nozzle to the air and pumping $80 worth to the ground.
Poet Brenda Hillman has a poem called “Moaning Action at the Gas Pump” which I can never get out of my head: “Inside the pump you can hear a bird, a screech-covered pelican lugged out of the Gulf...”
My poems too want to stick in heads. They want to speak out. My poems don’t want another species lost so they can speak out.
I love to travel but I have travelled.
I’m not sure I believe in government controls, but recently I conceded I was a socialist. I do believe in people helping people/animals and other creatures too.
Some say (we all know) that there is only one earth. One blue bowl I like to say. The field of poetry so small.
What is out of proportion? Humans are. Bob MacDonald gave hope for the present but still, too many humans, we are out of proportion.
So. I’m not going to fly to Ontario but I am going to fly soon. I’m going to be careful. But not 100% careful. The tally is skewed. Recently I saw the term “imperfect environmentalism.” Perhaps that’s me.
My ability to choose, skewed.
Skewed too, this thin white covering on my bones and tissue. This mammal: primate: homo sapiens: human who gets to choose.
*
With non-exact quotes from Bob MacDonald’s presentation at Victoria Festival of Authors on October 2, 2022 and his book The Future is Now. With the line “The field of poetry so small” from “Blurbs” by Phil Hall published in Periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. The notion of “non-naïve radical hope” comes from Julie Sze. And quoted lines from Benda Hillman’s book Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, Wesleyan University Press, 2013.
Yvonne Blomer lives on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEC´
(Saanich) peoples of the Coast Salish Nation. Her most recent book is The
Last Show on Earth, Caitlin Press, 2022. This fall Palimpsest Press
released Book of Places 10th Anniversary Edition with new poems and
layout. Yvonne’s poetry books also include As if a Raven (Palimpsest
Press, 2015), and the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and Sweet
Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press, 2017 and 2021). Sugar
Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur is her memoir exploring body,
time, and travel. Yvonne is the past Poet Laureate of Victoria, B.C.
