Leaping away from human destruction: A poem
By Alexandriana Davis
As I transition from my teens to my twenties this year, I do not feel happy or ecstatic. I feel claustrophobic. The weight of adulting has finally caught up to me and is pinning me to the ground. My life story, something that once felt like one of possibility, now seems like it has already been written for me. Climate change exacerbates these feelings as our governments fail us, pushing the consequences of their actions onto our generation. My life feels out of my control. Now, as I blow out the birthday candles, all I wish to do is hop away. I wish that I didn’t have to worry about the bleak forecast of our future. I wish to leave this unnatural state of mind and become a frog.
Below is a poem about my desire to escape the reality of my future through the leaps and bounds of frogery.
~~~
I wish to hop away from responsibility.
Let me leap into the murky puddle
Of endless possibilities.
From lily pad to lily pad to lily pad I fly,
The gentle breeze rushing past my
Gleaming, moist exterior.
My eyes bulge outwards at the sight
Of my next meal, and the freedom
I have to choose, to pick, to decide
Winks at me from my periphery.
To have the option of whether
To just survive, or truly live
Never occurs to me, for I always knew
That my destiny in this green body
Was to live freely, fully.
I wish to jump higher than I ever have before.
Test my capabilities and witness the
Assent of my greatness.
Then I will return to my cozy
Mushroom cottage, surrounded by seaweed,
To lean into my soft, gentle, quiet nature.
I can be anything I want to be, I whisper,
As I take out my monocle and read the
Pondsweekly paper. I can swim and
Smile to my amphibian friends who know
That they, too, have never been restrained
By greed, envy, hatred.
I can decide to crawl out into the moonlight
Picking out constellations in peace.
I have never felt the weight of responsibility
For I am a green creature of freedom
A being with infinite possibilities.
But then, when all seems to be harmonious,
My dreams are stomped on
By the selfishness of humanity.
The desperate desire for more, the
Greed, envy, hatred they harbor,
Crush me beneath their feet.
Humanity begins to infect me in this world, too.
Their plastic bottles and polluting oils
Arrange themselves in the pond so I
Cannot sing my croaking melody
Without hacking and coughing.
I thought that by being a frog, I might escape
Their poison, my own poison,
And become something beyond the
Societal expectations that decide my future.
But the amphibian in me, the one sleeping
In my mushroom cottage, is slowly
Losing their ability to breathe, to swallow,
To leap from lily pad to lily pad
And watch the stars with no weight
Resting on their shoulders.
My future, no matter what species I am,
What creature I wish to be, is haunted
By the ghosts of those who lost themselves
At the hands of human exploitation.
There is no choice in the reality that is
Earth, when the grass beneath our feet
Is crumbling, when the pond has been poisoned.
This trap, this inescapable future,
Feels hopeless because we humans
Made it impossible to be an amphibian.
We made it impossible to live.
No matter how many leaps we make
And flies we consume
We will never find freedom,
So long as humanity continues
To ravage our planet.
We must continue to fight, no matter what
Form that may take,
For the bleak future that awaits us
Is not set in stone.
One can only hope that one day,
Greed and hatred
Will disappear from this planet.
The frog in me, then,
Will finally begin to breathe again,
Returning to the peace and quiet of nature
That they should never have lost
In the first place.
I wish to hop away from responsibility.
Let me leap into the murky puddle
Of endless possibilities, so I can envision
What it’s like to take a breath of fresh air,
To feel the grass beneath my feet,
To hear the chirping and crickets of the beings
We have disrespected and ravaged.
From lily pad to lily pad to lily pad I fly,
Imagining the greed seep out of our human minds
As we return to practices of care and love.
My eyes bulge outwards at the sight
Of my next meal, and the freedom
I have to choose, to pick, to decide
Winks at me from my periphery.
To have the option of whether
To just survive, or truly live
Always occurs to me, for I know
That my destiny in this green body,
In this human body,
Was to live freely, fully
Before it was taken away from me.
