(Poetry & Prose) Of corroboree frogs and climate change by Susan Hawthorne

The habitat of the southern corroboree has been severely damaged during the bushfires in Australia. They live in a small alpine area in Kosciuszko National Park.

This frog and so many other animals in Australia have come under threat from fires that are the result of patriarchal abuse of the planet for short-term profit and self-aggrandisement.

I have been writing and thinking about ecological destruction for a couple of decades. My book Wild Politics (2002) has a central theme running through it around biodiversity. My chapter in September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives (2002) which I co-edited with Bronwyn Winter is about Fundamentalism, Violence and Disconnection and dissects the misuses of power on behalf of the powerful. In 2006, I sat through Category-5 cyclone Larry and in response wrote my poetry book Earth’s Breath (2009). It was to recur in 2011 when another Category-5 cyclone Yasi hit. Both were one point on the scale up from Katrina and it was from this experience that the following poem came.

Climate change: Yugantameghaha

At the end of every cosmic cycle
at the end of a generation— yuganta-
meghah— clouds congregate
gathering souls for the next yuga

cloud breath, soul mist
rasping winds, rattling bones
here come the galloping horses
humans astride their flanks

here come the thundering clouds,
breaking the world apart
the Hercules moth climbs every building
rising upwards through 110 floors

scaling the earth to find the moon
that light in the sky through which
he might escape earth’s pull
and melt into the inferno of light.

Yugantameghaha is a Sanskrit word meaning a gathering of clouds at the end of an epoch; a yuga is an epoch and some say we are currently living in the Kali yuga, an epoch of destruction.

The most vivid memory is the sense of utter acceptance because this was the earth, there was nothing I could do. I felt it as fascination for the power of the earth and at the time I described it as a kind of cosmic consciousness. I think that were it to happen again I would be more likely angry knowing just what a big part is played in these catastrophes by men. I say men because it is men’s rulership that had led us down this path. It is the intransigence of men like our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (nicknamed Scomo, Scotty from Marketing and worse) along with his ‘mate’ Trump and numerous others who are thoroughly engaged is destroying the planet. Scott Morrison is the man who, in 2017, brought a lump of coal into Parliament. It shows the level of his consciousness.

The bushfires that have ravaged Australia Since September, an estimated 10.7 million hectares an area larger than South Korea, almost double the size of the fire in the Amazon in 2019. It has been distressing to see so much devastation on the TV and to hear stories from friends caught up in the fires. Some evacuated multiple times; some returning home not knowing whether their place had survived; some seeing their home towns destroyed; some involved in fighting the fires; some watching as embers fall from the sky in cities; some unable to go outside because the air is so thick with smoke. We all know someone. We know that we have another couple of months of fire season. It’s not over yet.

We also know just how destructive these fires are. With around a billion native animals dead: koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, potoroos. And there are wombats, echidnas, dingos and emus who even with methods of surviving wild fire have succumbed. Birds of many kinds have been washed up on beaches; fish in rivers will die because of the ash load. So many trees and habitats burnt out. The impact on biodiversity will be long lasting. The impact of political stupidity lies behind these ravages of the environment.

There have been some inspiring stories of animals being rescued or found alive after the fire and taken for treatment. But more have died than have survived.

We have new words to describe some events. Pyrocumulonimbus, a cloud created by fires that produces its own weather. And on the ground pyric-carnivory, the animals who hunt the scorched earth after fire.

I could have lived without these new words, just as I could live without the politicians and corporates who are destroying the planet.

Here is a poem in progress:

rigor mortis

a rigor mortis of black grass
like burned spines of a dead animal
remains of ravaging fire

on the map a black rorschach blob
read: climate change

carrion swoop on exposed animals
ferals travel to burnt out spots

rivers are not safe
fish dying from ash poisoning

a rigor mortis of politics
burnt out minds from too much coal
not thinking: climate change

The poem, Climate change: Yugantameghaha is from Earth’s Breath.Melbourne: Spinifex Press and in Best Australian Poems 2009. Robert Adamson. Melbourne: Black Inc. p. 90. Earth’s Breath is a collection written in response to Cyclone Larry in 2006. © Susan Hawthorne, 2009. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=197/

To read more about how central the idea of biodiversity is to bringing the planet back from the brink of destruction, read my book Wild Politics: Feminism, globalisation and biodiversity, 2002, Spinifex Press. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=171/

© Susan Hawthorne, 2020.

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