Rebecca Stonehill
Rebecca Stonehill lives in Norwich where she writes historical fiction and award-winning poetry and teaches creative writing. This year she was awarded Backlash Press's Best Book Award for her non-fiction work, The Sky Within - A Memoir of Sleep, which is published later this year.
only that it’s becoming unmanageable;
that much, only, do I know.
And more than knowing –
I feel it, in the corals bleaching and leaching
of colour, in the thud of trunks as they
hit the floor of ancient forests,
in the vapour trails that crisscross the skies
like angry scars,
in the face of the child who stands
waist deep in swirling water,
in the soft marrow of my bones,
I feel it.
Leaders clutch details in
tight fists, declaring code red on humanity
while continuing to stall like an infant
on wobbly legs, but I feel it in the
fracking, the extracting, the screaming,
the demeaning, in the losses and
the tossing aside of the pleas
of those already suffering and as we
burn and turn our eyes towards
one of the first chemical
compounds we learnt in science
at primary school, we listen
as rhetoric bubbles and spews
like smoke-blackened exhaust
fumes from a truck
and we know that it is up to
us who must pause
and breathe, breathe and pause.
And Act.
CALL TO ACTION:
Get involved with local, grassroots environmental initiatives. Tend to and care for your local waterways, hedgerows, woodlands or wildlife, feel empowered by this and watch as the ripple effects grow.
Rebecca Stonehill lives in Norwich where she writes historical fiction and award-winning poetry and teaches creative writing. This year she was awarded Backlash Press’s Best Book Award for her non-fiction work, The Sky Within – A Memoir of Sleep, which is published later this year.