The Peaceable Kingdom
Today's poetry project
Paul Hawken has a beautiful vision for future cities and their role in reversing the effects of climate change to create a flourishing future. It’s in his book Regeneration, you know, the one I’ve been blabbing about here for over a year now. I’m still reflecting and writing in response to entries from the book, and I’m not going to be done for at least another month.
We could all use a little bit of hope for the future of humankind today, amiright or amiright? Here’s some hope in poem form.
The Peaceable Kingdom
“What becomes of civilization in this century will be determined by what happens in urban and suburban environments.” - Paul Hawken, Regeneration
And all across the city there are trees, soaring, breathing pines and live oaks as tall as telephone poles. Water, once dammed, culvert piped, and ditched, follows ancient paths again, carving curls of seagrass islands where heron hunt and fiddler crab hide. A patchwork quilt of urban gardens span former food deserts. Here, the medians spill over with perennial pollinator beds, bees dance with monarchs and hummingbirds as we pull the weeds of unused industrial spaces across our city to replace wasted land with towering vertical farms. Species and people long exiled come home to brooks and parks and sidewalks—you can hear them—choirs in the trees, serenaders in the streets, singers crooning on riverfront boardwalks, soloists swooping overhead— they sing a song of safety, freedom, joy, peace, they sing welcome, sing plenty, sing beauty, sing resilience. Grandparents tell stories of when there was asthma, asphalt jungles, a Great Pacific Garbage Patch, when cities were made not for people but automobiles, when water caught on fire, when air pollution hid the heavens. Their grandchildren kayak wetland swamps of sweetgum and bald cypress, fish, and wonder how it could have ever been different than this. Later, they will follow their fathers through greenhouses, aisles and aisles of empty flats, take seed packets and plant another row.