Bee bread, or: Battered

Dedication

This tanka prose is dedicated to the inimitable Shira Destinie Jones who has committed her life to developing a sustainable societal framework to provide a basic safety net for each and every child.

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Tanka prose

A safer, empathetic, and sustainable global society in which each person has food, shelter, education, and health care, at least at a basic level… Such a wondrous, wonderful notion…

Jaded as I am, I tend to relegate such ideas to the realm of fantasy, especially as global society seems to be moving in the precisely the opposite direction – towards seemingly ever-increasing financial inequality.

fair cumulus clouds
benevolent, breeze-buoyed
goldened promises
wind-change churning, sinister
cumulonimbus-c(r)ackles

In truth, I take no issue with people accumulating wealth; but an additional billion dollars in profit for a billionaire CEO won’t much change his or her life, whereas the merest fraction of that amount could improve a poor family’s standard of living significantly.

It’s clear that our societies would be better for all if there existed a floor on poverty, such that every baby born could have a secure childhood. Children struggling to survive are, quite simply, less likely to achieve their full potentials and develop into fully contributing members of society.

tree battered by rain
shields bee nest in dry hollow
larvae grow within
workers distribute bee bread
pollen and honey for all

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d’Verse Open Link Night

I wrote this tanka prose for d’Verse OLN #314.

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#TankaTuesday

The above tanka prose was written for Colleen M. Chesebro’s ‘Tanka Tuesday’ prompt. Poets were prompted to employ this particular poetic form, which Colleen explains in detail.

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Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

–Ben Harper (b. 1969)

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!