With Earth on the killing altar, the gods are pacified with sweet but empty words

The world is faced with challenges that all require a solution here and now. To be sure, there have always been problems humanity, and her natural siblings, the fauna and flora of our planet, have had to face through the centuries. In the distant past when there were volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, droughts and famines that we couldn’t even begin to explain, let alone protect ourselves against, our ancestors would attribute such calamities to angry gods, or to an angry God, presuming that it was punishment for something they had either done or not done. Sacrifices would then be in order.

And although natural disasters still visit us, we know much more about their workings today; we know their origin and we understand why they occur. As a result, we attribute their origin to the sole impulse of the physical world. Although there’s not much we can do to stop them, we are able to predict them, for one, and we have technology and scientific knowledge to survive some of their destructive muscle. In Japan, for example, tall buildings are built to be “rubbery”, so that they may absorb as much seismic wrath as possible.

The thing is that we are Homo sapiens. Progress and discovery are wired into us. During the Industrial Revolution we started acquiring and applying knowledge and know-how enough to start altering the physical world we depend on, mainly by burning coal and thereby increasing the quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If anything, we were beginning to become gods, or God, endowed with the power to modify or obliterate Earth, as if we had hitched a ride inside it, like the Greeks did in Troy, and we are now coming out of our fake gift horse.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, we are not alone in this space. The woodpecker still jackhammers the tree trunk; bees still waggle dance to share coordinates; flowers still bloom to attract birds and bees. The genetic urge to survive and bear offspring drives everything and everyone. This has always been true for the individual. But of late this natural phenomenon has proven to be in the throes of failure.

Through eyes we did not know we had

Woodpecker

By Kelwyn Sole

Woodpecker in the forest’s vast closed cupboard
raps to get out. But it can’t. And the hammering
caroms from bill to bole, from tree to tree,
from ear to echo back to ear, till you are wholly
trapped within the collateral declensions of its hunger.
Nothing remains to twin any beat with its original -
just a kaleidophone of multiplying woodpeckers
afflicting wood with drumtaps whose single author’s
lost. You can no longer tell the woodpecker for
the trees of sound: so here you stand, abashed,
hoping to conjure a path out of all the ricocheting
directions made possible around you, then recollect
exactly when your body began to shatter; to collect
the slivers of yourself which are now mere detritus
of the act – irretrievable – of a single thoughtless bird.

Isaac’s Sacrifice

By Geoffrey Philp

I wonder if he ever spoke to his father
again? I mean, there he was playing
marbles in the dirt with his friends,
or out in the fields flying a kite
while John crows circled over the tamarinds,
and then, his father’s familiar bellow,
“Isaac, get the donkey, and stop
with those fool-fool games!
And what have I told you
about playing with those little hooligans
who don’t wear any sandals?”  But this time
it was different. This time his father
was as cross as a camel with a burr on its tail.

They climbed the hill without a word
between them, and Isaac gathered sticks
and bramble, washed himself clean in the cool
springs the way his father had ordered him
before he left to gather stones.

And after they were both finished,
Abraham, tears in his eyes, asked Isaac
to lie down on the makeshift altar
and being a good son, he obeyed,
even when he saw the long knife
hovering over his chest and didn’t blink
when his father turned away,
as if he had heard a different voice
and found a new sacrifice.

As they descended the hill,
and Isaac was kicking stones
out of the path without Abraham
complaining about ruining his new sandals,
and patting him on the head, saying,
“My boy, my only begotten son,”
trying to be his friend, again,
Isaac held Abraham’s trembling hand
against his cheek, and forgave him,
yet he couldn’t help but think,
“What would have happened if
the old goat hadn’t been so lost?