Regeneration

An Ecological Sonnet

by Alex Zimmerman / April 7th, 2019

Sacred mother, connecting all that thrives,
Be it quick life or slow eroding stone.
Now teach us to co-operate, not strive.
Show us gardens that First Nations have sown.
Our stale old mode of thought, replaced must be.
A clear new way of being true, we need,
One less like machines, and more like a tree.
That ancient wisdom the world needs to heed.
We are not other, not set above all.
We must recognise ourselves in the whole,
Find the courage, the grit, the wherewithal,
Grasp the new future, seek the worthy goal.
Nature and humankind can integrate,
Through bold design we must regenerate.

Alex was, until retiring recently, an engineering technologist and executive by trade, and he owned a consulting practice focused on operationalizing sustainability in the buildings industry. Since then, he designed and built a small boat, rowed and sailed the Inside Passage with it, has published a book about his 25+ years of kayaking and sail and oar boating on British Columbia’s coast (called “Becoming Coastal”) and occasionally writes poetry. Read other articles by Alex.

This article was posted on Sunday, April 7th, 2019 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.