These Days

by Sky Bray

I just don’t want to get out of bed some days
dragging my sullen scowl
the pull of strong coffee but its never enough
these days.
They say we need the rain
it puts out the fires that burn
every year now
and yet
the grey of it all
the cold under my toes
the wet, the heavy atmospheric
pulse, like a heart beating too slow.
But the tiny flowers that pop colour
the brilliant emeralds of budding hydrangeas
those new shiny babies, they love the stuff -
my garden in the rain is usually a kind of heaven.
Still, these days I wake
with the knotted dreams of fish-farms, pipelines
apathy on the edges.
Where is heaven in 60% of animals going extinct?
Where is it in lost and murdered women, 
a highway of tears, 
the genocide that just keeps-on-a-truckin’
the whale-neighbours starving to death while politicians watch
Netflix.
Where is it in sanctioned “predator hunts”
wolves shot from helicopters
bears slaughtered in their dens while their babies scream, 
in horror. Oh my horror.
Every day I stand at my kitchen island
oscillating 
between this cold, wet rainforest
the torrential salty rain on my face 
and this burning hot explosive summer fire
the kind that kills firefighters
the kind that makes you get up and do something (!)
or roll over and wish
for a thousand years of sleep.