when your poetry melts a glacial dissolution
in a dance of life’s endings
it is time
to scribe with the grim ink
of the dead and the dying
that more than human extinction
it is time
to wring tears from rock
blood from trees
sense from coyote
it is time
to watch in alarm
as four riderless horses
perish in the floods
it is time
for fire to burn it all
as the curtain falls and
hope’s siren fades
her lament resigned to living
out there alone
in that future abyss
who looks for hope
in the present moment
where it need not exist
those who cannot dwell there
distracted by the growth
that breeds ignorance
there’s plenty of oil
there’s plenty of coal
there’s plenty of time
all down that gold paved
hope-filled road called the future
that we never ever reach
well where did all that hoping get us
take a look around
this is the future
one your ancestor’s could not have dreamed up
would not in their wildest have hoped for
those hopes that they surely visioned
now lie at the roadside in tatters
maybe hope was always a siren
Written for Earthweal’s Weekly Challenge
This short piece will give you a sense of where the poem is rooted.
Paul Scribbles 
I have to agree on your vision of hope here, Paul. So often a bitter mistress, and the particular hope, that all will magically go well despite oblivious greed ruling everything, has the most bitter taste of all. Above and beyond that, I love the flow of this, the measured cadence and music, like an elegy…”it is time/to wring tears from rock..” indeed.
Thanks for dropping by. Always a pleasure to read you. Even your comments are poetic. To be honest, my take on hope has been deeply informed by another, one Stephen Jenkinson, who prefers, based on a lived life, to leave hopeful and hopeless aside and instead live, in his words, hope free.
Grim ink indeed, Paul, “to wring tears from rock/ blood from trees/ sense from coyote/
it is time/ to watch in alarm/ as four riderless horses/ perish in the floods.” I often think how appalled my grandmother would be at the state of the world. Who ever could have dreamed this nightmare? Oh, I love your friend’s idea of living hope free. It is the most realistic of the options. Such fine writing, Paul. So glad you found earthweal.
Thanks Sherry. As the winter whispers its way in here I hope to write more often.
I can see your point of view. Blind hope will get us nowhere, but I hope that people will start waking up to the truth and work together to act before it is too late.
Action is what we require to plant seeds for a future we will never see. Personally I think too late already sailed and those that will follow us are in for a hell of a ride. Nonetheless I will work today for a better future for my descendants. In the present moment I do not need hope. I need to get to work.
Yes totally agree with the getting to work 🙂
Despair writes more poems, and hope that this world will change is a dim prospect for aubades. But whattayagonnado? as the Soprano boys would say. The heart needs light.
The heart needs light for sure and it must also be tempered by shadow. I am not suggesting we give up here. I am, if anything calling for us to write more fiercely from the present moment. With what is. No one hopes for ‘Now’ because we are already here and in the collective history of hoping, where did it get us? Perhaps we write our love songs for the future from a bed of grief and gratitude?
Sorry for the late comment. I agree with you here – both hope and hopelessness lead to our fatal inaction.
Love the grim ink and the driving rhythm of the repeated it is time- it is time – it is time.
Enjoyed the Stephen Jenkinson interview too. (besides his wisdom and clarity he also has an uncanny likeness to my late father which is always a little unnerving – in a good way)
Thanks for dropping by. I guess any door to an ancestor is a good one, unnerving as it might be. Go Well.