What do I hate?

19. 12 June 2021

At an activists’ meeting we were asked to think

What fruit did we feel like?

What did we love

And what did we hate?

Most of the hates were abstract concepts:

Injustice; Binary Thinking; Racism.

*

Except for one older woman who said,

“I hate summer skies with no swallows

And no butterflies.

What I saw all around me in my childhood

Has just disappeared.”

*

I hate summer skies with no swallows

And no butterflies.

*

That nails it.

*

The skies aren’t empty yet.

There are gulls and crows and jackdaws

And pigeons and sparrows.

*

But no swallows dipping and diving for insects

And no butterflies.

***

What can I say? We are losing so many birds: sometimes it’s bird flu, sometimes it’s neonicotinoids, which poison the insects which poison the birds.