My Poetry Corner April 2024 features the poem “Earth Crisis” from the poetry collection We Are Poetry: Lessons I Didn’t Learn in a Textbook (USA, 2022) by Kym Gordon Moore, an African American poet and marketing communications professional. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.

Moore earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice and a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Marketing. Born and raised in South Carolina, she now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

With over four decades as a writer and public speaker in marketing communications, Moore has become an advocate of using poetry in the fight against illiteracy and aliteracy among children and adults. She also mentors young and aspiring poets by identifying commonalities in their personal stories while exposing them to diverse opportunities that transform their experiences into creative development.

Moore’s latest book is not your regular collection of poetry. As noted on the back cover: “This book contains several components that serve as an academic complement giving creative insight into the poetry revolutionary movement. It functions as a dialogue engineer, designed to build and employ the application of poetry in the fight against illiteracy, functional illiteracy, aliteracy, and disparity.”

In the nine-stanza title poem, “We Are Poetry,” the poet draws attention to our shared human experiences and lessons learned that we bring to poetry. The excerpt below includes the first and seventh stanzas (p. 237):

We are children of the universe not an invisible species
caretakers of creation, freedom seekers, and justice makers
bridge builders not wall squads, converging on the path of love
compassion emerging from our hearts like a phoenix rising

[…]

we are poetry, an opulent rainbow of luminous tribes
melding in an earthly crockpot of multifaceted cultures
mighty voices standing up for the marginalized and oppressed
dousing the firestorm of hatred and infected sores of bigotry

The final three-stanza poem in the collection, “Let There Be Peace,” is a call for a peace that surpasses all understanding (p. 277):

We echo, let there be peace on earth
we pray for an end to conflict and wars
emotionally charged anger and bitterness
like a ferocious animal where bloodshed roars

The featured nine-stanza poem, “Earth Crisis,” is my selection for Earth Day 2024 celebrated on Monday, April 22nd. Manifestations of our planetary crisis, covered in the poem, are stark: environmental degradation, intense storms, climate change, deforestation, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, floods, scorching wildfires, and industrial waste. Yet, we continue to go about our lives as though all is well. We’ve got this. Technology will make all things right again, we tell ourselves. 

In the first stanza, Wisdom calls on humanity to awake to our folly (p. 216):

Wisdom calls aloud to the children of men
she raises her voice, radiation of her cries
in her restlessness she pleads, a warning for decades
as the battle between humans and nature intensifies

With a collective voice, the poet acknowledges our failure to respond to the crisis of Mother Earth in the second and third stanzas:

we, the caretakers of creation have failed
deaf ears and blind eyes devoid of compassion
ignoring her health, hearts hardened like ice-cold stones
amid environmental degradation, devastation, a global crisis

how can we remain complicit as Mother Earth weeps
problems won’t disappear should we choose to deny them
how do I love thee as storms become more pronounced
climate change, intense groans in the gates of death

In the seventh stanza, Wisdom calls aloud, raising her voice, but they hated knowledge / reduce your carbon footprints and emissions intensity… Faced with our inaction, Wisdom can only alert us to the dangers we now must face, as expressed in the final stanza (p. 217):

how can I bring forth your fruit in due season
when my breath is taken away, and you return to dust
your social status, your financial net worth matters not
when the foundations of the earth have been laid to rest.

This Earth Day, let us remember that Earth is our only home. There is no Planet B. Let us make every day Earth Day.

To read the complete featured poem and learn more about the work of African American Poet Kym Gordon Moore, go to my Poetry Corner April 2024.