14 minute read
Collected Poems of Mary Andrews: COP27 Edition by Mary Andrews
Collected Poems of Mary Andrews: COP27 Edition
By Mary Andrews
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My writing throughout this block has been shaped by the environments, events, and people of Conferences of the Parties (COP) 27, 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. By writing about my surroundings, the people that have inspired me, and the ideas that were offered, a few themes surfaced throughout my poetry that have not been present thus far in my creativity. Those themes include human relationships to food and food justice throughout farming practices and natural disasters, and climate justice and resistance to systems. I also took the storytelling aspect from our class’s focus on the Talanoa dialogues into my writing here and there which was a really fun process to explore in poetry. Further, patterns I have noticed in my own writing prior to this class have been repeated and adapted in this body of work. Creating eutopias with my writing is a practice I have noticed in my writing, and I use it throughout these pieces to create a world in which climate policy and reparations are implemented, and it draws on my own optimism in climate work. Creating portraits of people who inspire me (and sometimes those who disgust me) is another theme throughout my writing that I brought into these pieces to cultivate the feelings I experienced while listening to people and their stories at COP. Lastly, I wrote about the self in the midst of chaos throughout this portfolio sparingly, which is another theme consistent to my work that I adapted to use as a way of conveying the overwhelming nature of the conference and the amount of information being spewed, the amount of people from all over the world, and the largeness of the energy throughout the venue.
Epigraph: “Feed and nourish what your heart is in” -Myra Jackson
I sing myself into the morning Watching ripe faces arrive As the hand slides over to one minute late We take the bait And settle into the storm ahead
Now! Listen To whirring cranks and shifts Not welcome to drums pounding, working To hear instead the shuffle of colors Of brushes on clean paper
Pull cloth over wounds Over waves rock rigid White water swells and Salt heals head wounds too
I can hear overthinking and changing colors too fast Cracks, reminders of your own ability Last minute madness
Soft pale pink petals float slowly across the marble Under foot Under sun and the cloudless sky Under rooftops covered in vines and oranges, yellows, like little tiny explosions of color And big flat leaves pushed back and forth in the breeze from the sea foam swirls Handkerchiefs wipe sweat and dirt away Exposing a smooth clean new day
There was a little boy Just standing on the corner And his clock read 10 But even then he wasn’t from Those years ago With the air against my shoulders And it’s heavier around his I don’t know why but he’s taller With his head on straight His shoulders With the air around him stronger And he must be even wilder I don’t know how but I’m older Sinking deeper into older Running faster From his shoulders There must be something in the water
Filling the stomach Blue, blue, black and blue The house burns harder and faster Red flames light the mountain sides and forest floors coating us in ash Now more than ever It is Suffocating seeds And my form of resistance is ordering an oat milk latte It is Shriveling greens back further away into shadows and they droop their necks closer to the dirt each day we worry their faces might touch the ground and be buried there, no longer breathing out the sweet morning air that clears our lungs And we are worried about all 10 billion You billion in here We don’t feel real fear Of the drooping and backing and shriveling and suffocating and what may come to us if we don’t do anything
We fill our stomachs with all clean textures and colors We are worried about replicating those while billions are Say, logistical bottlenecks Only terminology Not real skin and lips, not real fingers tending to the green to the stream to the same ten things only to find they cannot lift you up anymore Filling the stomach is not enough
Goddess-like Her long dark blue swirling swimming fingers reach out To touch each of us here Her reeds wrap us tight and fast into community bundles Rock us to sleep now with your sweet bird song and cricket chorus Wrapped tightly now in your blanket of reeds and seeds Each made from a different strain of your grain, of your flowing eddied and streams, of your loom of life, of your neverending sunrise shore Reach out to us now with your long fingers sat on your palest grasses while we wait, Breathe short and stomachs twisted, For our words to shape your fate
She’s giving professor umbridge Talking yourself into progress Reports Research on nuclear your stance is clear: I agree with the esteemed panelists Whose large square shoulders shove mine further into my chair From either side We won’t take your side But I’ll try To catch your eye And plead with mine To set your higher and follow your own gaze this time
We have not met our trajectories They’re deep in the sea Swimming free And we are agreeing on this matter? So what’s the matter? Can we stand up together And leave this room and dig to the middle of the earth where the mud burns hot so we can lay there and let the burning blur your vision because this work starts with a vision But ends when we’ve all walked the stone path out of the heat and into the air It is colder there
And clear
Pause, breathe, Bid blue farewell And welcome green. Goodbye blue rumpled stomachs and a tired wrist. Now tire out my mind’s eye I feel ready to cry But now I’m not as tired covered in the elements around me And I can sit in the restlessness Ready for another round Ears open at the ready and my pencil steady
What does the River say to you? On the first day of the year A mother walks along the riverbank waiting for an answer The sun scorches down on her neck to keep her warm but her hands seem smaller here to her against the long shadows of the purple sky Storm clouds gather as purple grows to green and the first few drops hit her face She tilts her nose to the sun and tries to breathe in the rays one more time but he has already rode his horses into the rain When she looks down the river speaks to her and tells her to be brave She begins her long walk towards the forest And says goodbye to her children oak, maple, and dogwood. She travels far under rain filled skies and when they part to blue she stays the night in a bed of moss They pull the moisture from her clothes and her hair Now at the edge of the forest she walks further to the cactus She learns of her shields and storing But here her lungs cannot fill full so she stays the night in the mountains in the shelter of an aspen grove, who as one, breathes strength into her lungs. The next day her legs bring her further to the mangrove trees whose lessons of resilience restore her hope. After a night under palm’s long flat leaves that show her the kindness in their coconut milk offering She is able to travel further to the mighty redwoods, whose wisdom is unmatched. On the last day of the year a mother returns to her neck of the woods, lays on her back on the riverbank with answers heavy in her heart, with her children oak, maple, and dogwood watching her overhead. She breathes in the cool air of her true home and welcomes the soft snowflakes on her eyelashes. She sits up and begins her work What does the River say to you?
Paintings and portraits from COP27 Day 1
COP27, keep coping, keep cropping and talking about doing and doing without thinking and thinking without talking Big business booth and brothers in blue wait for you by buildings bannered and busy Buses to the city I know you think you’re witty Under the sky hidden by Plastic and wires And I’m already tired And our house is on fire. Even under the metal brier, Voices here inspire solutions Have power to put out the fire Have money in their corner And brother backing their Pavilion theme and panel topics So wasting my chance to listen to you Oh! Leaders and partners and quiet voices and wandering wannabes and tinies, and you from Uganda and you from Armenia, and you from Palestine Is not what I’ll do I’ll listen to you And write about you And all that you do And bring it home Letting those who agree that This is pretty silly And that we should have stopped at COP1 and we should not be on a jetway Getting away But we’re here at 27 Letting them influence me And comfort me And call on me for what they need.
Day 2 Hello, test! Test the limits of the oceans sink Sink your head into the work Work now for your grandfathers So they don’t have to leave this Earth depending on fate Fate is determined by our hands Hand that swoosh and point and Paint pictures of fire and flood and famine and war and unlivable worlds World, now our world, now our preached and our spending Spending time on being a defender of hypocrisy
Hypocrisies we can’t walk around or above Above, an ocean gal, like a beacon Beckoning us to connection, to her wide mothers arms, us feeling like grand-child-like, and kin-like, Cope like her With her long shawl draped cozy-like Dipped in power, in blue dyes like skies and ocean and eyes Mine glued to hers Deep and dark like depths of ocean like bark broken by a breeze blown from seaside into forest wet and wise and tangled in roots and rounded petals and pine needles and sweet sap and thorns and wings and acorn tops broken free from their mother seed from little squirrel paws and stones and sticks and searching eyes and butterflies and dew and you. You are nature and Nature is me and I am nature and We are in danger.
Day 3 If I speak english to my American colleagues about things they already know Recognition floats effortlessly through the air and chokes down my throat For these women, asked questions in english, sitting in plain white armchairs, up 3 steps above us, it is jail or proud resistance on the front line, Pushing for time, A speak for free Free speech floats in front of you too Taking every avenue to reach out and touch it without exposing wrists or checking your left-side shoulder. She is here for her people She is here for the African COP Even yet, she sits here And not in the room with the microphones and the restricted zones Flash, print, proof, used, What they don’t capture is a community built on love, built by hands and skies and trees and reefs and smiles and a child and a circle wide enough to let in communities and cultures that thrive by another water or wood and space for solidarity and not only priority In the form of joy and different shapes by pencil or planning and polling or preaching or Leading Since 500 years ago In backyard background, beyond
“The power of people is stronger than the people in power”
And that strength has a voice that’s tongue forms more beautiful more valuable louder warmer words than the person you elected.
Day 4 Blending thousands of strong carried voices mingle dipping down on our ears from the muggy air. Mixing with feedback and screen crackling creaking wood and pumps hitting the carpet with utmost importance. A man with three badges takes a call in the corner The IT guy looks so stressed he could cry A woman updates her cell phone on the patio, singing to her selfie stick over the hum of airplane engines and snack line hellos and groans about the heat And about her feet And about the sound And being overwhelmed Welcome to this noisy place Where through the mixture of it all, I search for meaning and a glimpse of my reason For listening to these circles and These esteemed panels These pumps on pallets These silent words These data takers Tech innovators Senators Through the sport coat, gesture casual, confidence is key, frown at the crowd, translations to english, i believes, no examples, vague reflections, new sidewalks, fluorescent lights, for your resume, heaving sighs, and wandering eyes, experts, launches, expensive lunches I look for you You who know the feel of the mud in your hands and the grass on your knees and the river in your hair. Take me there To where the full plate they preach about I can Reach out and pick Where the snakes are not the tempter Where women’s mistakes don’t become your reason for the ending of paradise She mis-stepped no doubt around your taunting To where the abundance of her shores and gardens is like the world to a child's eyes where the turtles back can be a home and a muskrat can save the world Where we are helpless and he is powerful and his little fist clutches riches more wondrous than anything. To where the sun welcomed by cloud ridden weekdays feels like magic on cheeks and looks like golden speckles on the rushing stream and together they smooth the rocks and feed the mossy green that springs so easily and blooms over everything and feeds the forest. To where the clean bright white blanket covers trees and ice sheets and pastures once green and rounds the stark edges of the roofs and all around the block, and ice forms
like spears and where a walking stick is her greatest gift of the day and is cherished until decay. To where sugar flows and asparagus grows and water knows the laughter of me and my friends so well and trees aren't in rows
Day 5 Flooding is the beast today Wells need to be built, dams for protection Or our crops will continue to yield only Straw and one resilient fruit, not enough to feed a rebellion Nothing golden Food is a magical way to explore this world Even through the screen cracked distance I can feel her Rich seeped meaning in these words Her eyes seem to come through the wall and seer into each of us Pink painted lips and curls that explode further than the room lets them exist You can hear the smile in her voice It pulls on each of our eardrums and forces us to curl the sides of our mouth slowly up with hers It can be magical in this work She shows it And she knows it Drought is the monster today Unrest floods deeper into everyday life, flushing out your golden strings and hunger bites harder with the minutes Heat waves are the invaders today Sweeping communities into lifeless living All you can do is be still and wait And Breathe And pray This is now our chance As a human problem A human coalition A chance now for you to save on your own 4 billion tons of golden gas that belongs here in your garden Who says you can’t change anything Your liquid sunshine and rays of healing Creating that golden space you dream of it in your dreams Only in your dreams it's golden so Bring it out now Build it now Follow your golden heart now Your garden can turn golden And green and purple and red And those 4 billion tons will be lifted off your golden hands and into everything you see around you
Like those eyes in the wall And that smile you can’t unsee
And now we rest In Her voice Careless like a child And tinkling like a bell that chimes over and over in a windstorm Her words flow out one after another, eager to paint a picture of her country We don’t have your strange ways of normalcy Mine is barefoot in the bush And my diving certificate painted across my chest like a name tag My captainship and my body as an anchor You have to sing Paint Drop out of school to campaign Because that world deserves her armor Her shields and spears alike And I can’t drag my ears away from her And I know the rest of the world she touches won’t be able to drag theirs away either