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Pale Riders
“Behold a pale horse. And his name that sat on
him was Death; and hell followed with him. “
--Revelations 6:8
These halcyon days have fled.
Pale sunshine barely registers day.
Flowers are dusted with sullen ash; we
Might think it’s a nuclear winter, so very
Still and gray and sad--daises dirging. I
Have expected calamity, not this toxicity. It’s
Time to face off with climate change.
To deny it is lethal folly; even
Fruit cannot brighten the hellish haze.
Wildfires blanket the west coast, roaring
like hordes of hell hounds breathing fire,
like rabid dogs, like winged
gargoyles dropping embers
as thousands of fire
fighters battle
terrible
dragons
now.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
15 comments:
Speechless with horror and sorrow, Glenn.
It's like all the riders of the apocalypse is here to murder us... will there be war as well?
up to the minute and straight out of revelations - an ingenious take on the prompt and not least how you wove in a Nonet at the end
My favorite phrase in this is "daisies dirging."
Bold work, Glenn. It does feel like The End, right now, eh?
Write on.
Powerful use of metaphor to capture unexpected "toxicity" -- like an apocalypse that already begun.
All of this, while the denier-in-chief prattles on.
Well done poem. Themes are so relevant today.
Excellent writing here Glenn. I am trying to stop thinking about the infernos raging around us — so I turned to fictitious horrors.
They are horrible images of those hellish haze. Time to reflect on what we have done to mother earth.
So very sad to see the destruction happening across the West Coast! The Dragons of old were nothing compared to the Dragons of fire all around!
Very nicely done Glenn!
The smoke has made it's way to the east coast. The sky is hazy and I can only imagine
the hellish nightmare on the west coast. This has me wondering where this is going wildfires and hurricanes. It feels like doomsday is upon us.
So glad you wrote this powerful piece - I'd been toying with writing on the coming summer here - watching California ablaze again - and those hellish skies. And you're right - until we really address climate change (our guys are spruiking more government funded gas plants for goodness sake) - summers are going to be a time of dread.
Wow, Glenn! Your poems convey your hellish summer to me so vividly, especially the flowers dusted with sullen ash and the ‘gray and sad--daises dirging’. The nonet is intense with horror; the ‘winged gargoyles dropping embers’ are scary and bring me closer to the devastation.
Bravo! Difficult to write about something this horrific, you managed it beautifully. Stay safe.
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