Three Featured Poets

Arting in Solidarity with Greta Thunberg

(Photo: Greta Thunberg/Twitter)

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surrendered to the sea

By Lola Stansbury-Jones 

My heritage and my lifeblood 
will be washed away in the flood. 
With the thud of mankind’s fall, 
a sea appears within a sea. 
Condemned by the powers that be 
like ghost towns we can’t recall. 

Lola is a young, working-class poet from the post-industrial carcass of North Wales. She can be found at lolastansburyjones.wordpress.com

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Unimak Pass

By Lisa Weber

I watch a show about whales— 
a mother and her calf traveling 
thousands of miles to reach the icy cold, 
krill-filled waters of the Bering Sea. 
Before she can reach nourishment, 
the exhausted and famished mother 
must take her vulnerable baby 
through a pass filled with orcas 
seeking their own nourishment. 
 
I pray the whales will make it, 
but the orcas are too smart, too hungry, 
and they separate the calf from its mother. 
I want the mother to fight, to chase the 
predators away and save her baby. 
But there is nothing she can do. 

I wonder why the whales must go through 
this, why the mothers put their calves in danger. 
Then I think about my son walking out the door, 
and how anywhere he goes could be like that pass. 
But instead of sharp teeth, the predators 
have guns, and they don't hunt to eat, 
but are driven by a hunger to destroy. 

I think about these things as I watch 
the orcas tear apart the whale calf 
and I feel a tearing inside me. 
I find myself crying and I don't know 
if my tears are for the calf 
or this country 
or my son. 

Lisa Weber is a wife, mother, and writer holding on tight to dreams and hope.

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Elsewhere in the Now

by Michelle Wong

despair had cried 
& 

joke had laughed 
as the trees swayed & 
sang :
 

do not 
dream 

too 
much 

elsewher
e 

in the 
now 

do not yearn 
a 
blueberry summer 
in 

the sweet of 
a 

winter maple 
run 

Michelle is a teacher, writer, and life coach.

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