Paradise Ravaged
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There’s peace, night-wandering these slumbering mountains, spellbound by their vast forests. In their dreams they sleep with the moon. I search their peaceful rivers. My spirit carries buoyant over their boulders and falls, my soul listening to ancient secrets whispered by their waters, echoed hauntingly in the treetops by great white owls.
These pristine mountains are breathtaking, unspoiled natural beauty. The fragrance of conifers intoxicate the night breezes, as moonlight drifts down dreamlike to blanket the forest’s canopy, to dance diamond-like on the chill mountain lakes. This special place is sacred, so close to my heart.
But this night, the breezes have become unbreathable, blistering winds, choked with soot and poisonous smoke. The rivers black, strangled with char and smoldering debris. Wild fires continue to rage and ravage. I weep — but will there ever be tears enough to again cleanse pure my defiled paradise.
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rob kistner © 2020
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fire dragons consume
poisonous vapors strangle
eden is dying
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span style=”color: #808080; font-family: helvetica; font-size: small;”>NOTE to “Blogger” site owners: I enjoy reading your work, but frustratingly, many “Blogger” sites DO NOT let me post comments? 🙂 So sorry if you don’t see personal comments from me on your “Blogger” site. But I will keep reading your work — and welcoming and responding to your comments here on Image & Verse.
I don’t know how you can stand experiencing/seeing what’s happening to your beloved forests and sacred mountains, Rob.
I can’t Lisa, I really can’t. So much pristine beauty being destroyed. So many friends driven from their homes in Oregon. We have not heard from all of our friends, my wife’s cousin’s family for one. They live in the Mt Hood foothills near where my wife and I lived for over 25 years. We are hoping hard they’re OK! I have wept real tears.
Oh that has got to be so tough. Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain
Thank you for your kind words. Rain rain rain! They keep pushing the rain further away in the news reports. Was supposed to have been here today, but no. I am doing all I can to conjure up a storm, a bid storm!
Two paragraphs of bliss, followed by a closer full of pure Hell. Wicked good writing, Rob; very sensory – so much so that the flames at the end feel that much hotter. We’re all crying right along with you, for what it’s worth.
Thank you Ron. 2020 just won’t go away. I have spent 30 years ecploring and reveling in the Oregon wilderness — this truly breaks my heart.
Oh Rob, I share your angst. My daughter and her husband spent their off duty hours doing photo-shoots of the beauties of Oregon, around their Salem hom. She often posted photos of the sunrise with Mt.Hood in the distance from her bedroom window. The last two photos one could hardly see across the street, and ash covered everything. I weep with you!
It is horrible Bev. We now live all the way up by Lake Washington, east of Seattle, 175 miles north of Oregon. You can cut the smoke and stench in the air Here with a knife. My doctor forbids me from going outside. I am sick with anguish over the gorgeous natural world that is being devastated right now. It will come back in my grandson’s life — but not mine.
Bang on, brother! The Pac NW is likewise being incinerated. Climate change is one of the culprits; Trump is another. I know (Fuck Trump). The poem is masterfully done, with a haiku twist capper, and a real zinger haiku on top of that.
I am happy to read your comment here Glenn. I hadn’t seen you active for a bit, and was concerned about you dude, with air quality being what it is. I truly can’t stand what’s happening here in our PacNW brother. In closing, can I just add a heartfelt… FUCK TRUMP!
Your paradise lost is such a sad thing to see coming across our news every day! I can’t imagine how awful it must be to witness it first hand! Such a heartfelt piece Rob. So well done.
Thank you Dwight. I feel sad, angry, helpless — trying to stave off hopeless. We need hope that this will see an end ASAP.
Witnessing destruction of what your heart is so close to, has to shoot through you like an arrow. This is awful. I hope there is an end in sight.
(and our Leader says, “it’s getting cooler. What climate change?”)
It is frustrating as hell Sara, and such a helpless feeling.
Leader, what leader? Oh, do you mean the bouncing, orange buffoon?
I’m saddened by the destruction of your mountain paradise, Rob! Praying for rain and safety for firefighters.
Thank you Lynn. Yes, no more! Been enough death, destruction, and divide. Time to find sanity and a safer world.
The contrast between your description of the Eden that was your home and the present devastation is heart-breaking, Rob. I hope the white owls have flown to safety, which is something you can’t do; you can only stay indoors away from the smoke. You have really brought it home with the juxtaposition of the ‘fragrance of conifers’ that ‘intoxicate the night breezes’ and the ‘unbreathable, blistering winds, choked with soot and poisonous smoke’. I am thinking of you and everyone who is suffering from these terrible fires, which I can’t imagine but have seen on the news.
Thank you Kim, that was the impact I was going for in the juxtaposition. It is truly a most terrible thing that is happening. Breathtaking ethereal natural beauty is being devastated. Anyone who wishes to deny climate change simply is not observing what is happening in the world today — or they are a moron! Thank you for visiting and reading… 😉
You paint such a beautiful picture of paradise then shock us awake with the hell it has become due to recent events. I hope the forest recovers quickly and that your loved ones are safe and well.
It is a catastrophe Ingrid!
It’s a pattern that will be repeated year on year while ever the world is full of deniers and governments refuse to act responsibly.
This critical mess indicates either undeniable mass insanity or unprecedented stupidity. I fear/hope it will take the world’s next generation or two — or more — to finally wake up and take control. But I see so many young, uneducated fools in this country, who rally behind Trump? So perhaps the biggest failure of this country is in our disastrous attempt at educatIng our youth. Maybe the true hope for the planet lies with a complete breakdown of the world ecology and economy, and then the hope that someone, in some country, will be intelligent and committed enough to begin rise and begin leading the peoples of our planet back into balance with the planet, and each other. Someone who can understand, and show, how to use this incredible global communication network we have, to do something beside ridiculous, air-headed “selfies“ and “tic fucking toc“. The world, lead, by the current American fools parade, and our orange-headed, moronic majorette, is exhibiting mass greed and ignorance on sn unsustainable level — and that is FUCKING troubling!! However, the establishment of the bedrock of a true turnaround might actually require decades, evdn centuries of global turmoil, and the die-off of the majority of the human race, to get to a manageable, genuine turnaround point. My hope for future generation(s) is that they avoid the ultimate extinction threshold — the point-of-no-possible-return.
I feel a howling grief, and it resonates, here we had a summer of fires so destructive it made me weep, and now I weep with you.
Yes, Australia has had its ass kicked with fires as well. 2020, the gateway to the End-Times? Let us hope these tears nurture a seed of hope Paul, because right now the world is FUBAR,
How devastating. I cannot imagine losing such natural beauty. I live din the Seattle area for a while & it breaks my heart to think…
Beautiful writing, in any case.
Debilitatingly sad Susan, thank you… 🙂
It is heartbreaking, Rob. Beautiful writing though. I know how you love this area. Is it safe where you are?
We are actually getting the haze from those fires here in NJ now!
I am still sad over all of it. The air here is still considered unsafe and reeks, but we are currently not in danger of flames. We need some serious rain, and then leaders who will begin raking climate change serious. We have had enough of buffoon time!
A poignant and timely write, Rob! It’s devastating all that’s happening nowadays.
Thank you Sanaa. Time for 2020 to leave!
It’s chilling and sad to see what happens and see how there are those who try to downplay their own role in its cause.
It is terribly sad, and we have irresponsible children at the head of this fucking fools parade.
It is heartbreaking to watch what is happening to all that land under fire.
Beautifully written prose about what you are living through.
Sending love!
Thank you Dale. This situation will eventually turn around — but what needs serious repair is leadership in this, and other Countries… and quickly as possible!
This is beautiful and real writing. I truly hope you and yours are well and safe and that the fires become controlled soon.
Thank you D! This mess and the leaderless governments that are exacerbating this global catastrophe need to step, that certainly included the USA?