The Heat Gives No Relief Poem by Shalom Freedman

THE HEAT GIVES NO RELIEF


The heat gives no relief
All inside palls
The mind does not work
Discomfort rules the world
Is there no way out?

The icecap melts
Everywhere a cruel malaise
Sinks the human spirit-

The sky is a threat
And the sun is an enemy.

We have become our own darkness
And do not have the courage
To resist our fossil fuel hunger

What will become of us?
The only creature we know
Capable of true contemplation
And changing worlds?

We stumble in the chaos of our own malaise
We must wake up before we are dead

But who will lead us? Where and how and now?
In a world of
More heat more discomfort
An increasingly unlivable earth?