I Can Do Everything Needful

Judy holding Credo Climate Hero sign because our coal ash group, Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump, received a $500 grant from Credo, which we will use to involve more people in our community as we put up more signs against coal ash.  The photo is by Robin Beane.  Thanks to Susan Alexander for grant writing.

We also brought the community together on September 18 for an amazing "plate sale" of a fried fish dinner, with so many people bringing food, helping serve, giving donations.  Duke Energy may have power of a certain kind, but we have love for and trust in each other.  It may take awhile, but we will overcome.  

Here's a poem I wrote last summer when I was discouraged.  I had to believe that we would succeed and that the zinnias I was planting would rise and bloom.  They did, my best zinnias ever!

***

THE OMENS ARRIVE XVI.  June 28, 2015

It comes to me now that I can do
everything needful.  I must not
doubt myself.  My life here has
its purpose.  This coal ash threat
scares me, which means I have to
dig deeper, prepare myself for war.
Such wars are mainly of the spirit
which is my strength.  If anyone
knows how to find her courage, 
I do.  Like Cassandra I read the
omens, but unlike that ancient
one who saw truth ahead of time,
I won’t die.  I’ll live and escape
harm as long as I listen to my
heart.  So few people do, and what
age needs to more than ours?  After
weeks of searing heat which rain
failed to relieve, storms baptized
us with buckets of cooling water.
The created order let go its battle
to breathe.  The outside world was
home again to fruit trees, grapevines,
that optimist the cardinal, my hens
who lived for weeks in shade, to the
lizards skimming over the brick 
walls of my home, to bees now back
to the business of pollinating.  Both
vegetables and weeds drink deeply,
and the new flower seeds will dare
to open root and stem and push
toward the light they never ceased
to believe was there.

***