11/22/2019 ART + POETRY: ELAINE WOOHOPE OF THE HUMMINGBIRD For the past decade, severe wind storms have battered the little community I live in on the Pacific Coast. Leg-thick tree limbs have busted roofs, littered lawns, flattened bushes, and felled old trees in our adjoining forest. This spectre is climate change. Elsewhere, the world is burning. What can one person do? Our solution is simple. During fall, we hang up a hummingbird feeder, seed feeders for larger birds, and a suet feeder for winter. We nourish the most vulnerable creatures of the forest, without discouraging their natural ability to forage. The small, bright glow of hope of our hummingbird friends inspired this poetic honouring: Shimmering red tweed on green our tiny guest wings beat time its needle dips deep into the slit of our offered feeder’s yellow plastic petals your forest retreat thinned climate-peril windstorm our serving a small buffer against a grievous global surge of natural tragedies one shock-absorber stands firm ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "A Vortex" previously published in print in Otoliths, issue fifty, part two, southern winter, 2018 and online at the-otolith.blogspot.com "Hope of the Hummingbird" first published by Elephant Journal, September 25, 2019 Elaine Woo has long engaged in the discourse on environmental justice through her poetry and visual art. She would like to see many more join in and take action in ways, big or small, as able. She is the author of the collections Put Your Hand in Mine, 2019 and Cycling with the Dragon, 2014.
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