Ecosystina
Charlotte (declutter) Clutterbuck’s meditation on ecosystems, plastic, op-shops, and ethical omnivores
Time to declutter
time to shed
time to fling out all the plastic
stop buying furbelows and bling
to clear out all the just-in-case
and come-in-handy. Time for a lift-your-game compact
to spurn mascara and the powder compact,
forsake the pokies and the track-side flutter,
accumulation and the possessive case.
Shed the auto, keep the shed
for pots and tools and seeds, enabling
a life more healthy and monastic
growing organic beans, embracing drastic
strategies – op-shop clothing, dumpster food, compact
furniture, houses with no optic-fibre cabling,
maybe even veganism with its utter
purity – no eggs, no pigs, no pigeons in the shed.
But maybe some of us can make a case
for home-grown ducks, or––tally-ho!––the chase,
eating feral rabbits, goats, fantastic
dishes of wild fish and roos – blood shed
quick and fresh, the age-old cleansing compact
of hunter culling weaklings from the cluttered
grasslands. But perhaps that’s just me tabling
aversion to all-or-nothing answers that I find disabling.
I’d infinitely rather case
the joint for broad solutions I admit may flatter
my own desires for lamb, but are also more elastic –
feeding our scraps to hens in compact
spaces along the railway tracks, behind construction sheds.
Now that we’ve reached the watershed
of rising seas, there’s no more fabling
that climate change is false, that the compact
of governments and coalminers is true. The case
is closed – the industrial dynastic
excess of power and money leads to utter
ruin. Yet, a middle way may shed more light upon our sorry case –
by all means rid yourselves of bling and plastic––
discard, renounce, forgo, compact––but please don’t ban my beef and butter!
Notes
With thanks to Restina: https://renajmosteirin.com/sestina.html
Like the characters in Twin Stars, I am an omnivore:
https://charlotteclutterbuck.com/three-steps-to-catching-an-aurochs/