Minor Destructions
People often ask me how I find something to write about every week. The answer always feels a bit lame – in essence, something always turns up. This week my musings are prompted by a poetry competition – entries should be poems in which the words ‘minor’ and ‘destruction’ need to appear. This caught my attention as they are two words which do not seem to go together, destruction by its very nature not being minor.
As I thought on this it occurred to me that, very often, we focus on small and manageable things while destruction rages around us. If we can continue with some semblance of everyday life, then all might be well – or at least it might feel that way. We can see stark examples of that in the way the people of Kyiv seem to soldier on and attempt to retain some sort of normality while being constantly under attack. And, as we know, there is no shortage of destruction around at the moment – the blood thirsty criminals who rule much of the world make sure of that. And away from the theatres of war the stirrers of hatred attack people for being Jewish, or Muslim, or for the crime of fleeing persecution – and stand in elections, hiding their true nature behind the national flag. Still destruction, if on a smaller scale.
So what do we focus on? We can focus on resisting the forces of destruction, reaching out to each other, reasserting our common humanity or we can retreat into ourselves, turn our backs on everything apart from our own small obsessions. The poem I’ve been playing with looks at the life of someone who opts for the latter route, a lonely affair.
Focus
the most troubling thing about the war
the resulting scarcity of bird seed
not the destruction and death all around
but his inability to give them feed
a minor bird problem some felt
but not to him
his theory being that only birds mattered
a theory now being tested to destruction
as friends and neighbours lost their homes
their jobs, their lives, aged years overnight
his attention was completely focussed
on the bird cage and its inhabitants
the budgerigars and linnets
who tested compassion to its limits
their suffering a judgement on him some felt
for the sin of keeping songbirds captive
his grief for them a punishment
as his denial of others suffering
his lack of care defined his focused life
four prisoned birds his only offering
to the god in whom he failed to believe
Image courtesy of Geson Rathnow