A Poem for Thursday...."The Flood"

 

"Noah survives the Flood"...ceramic by Alan Snape

The Flood

Two four six is a children’s rhyme.

Two, four and six is the sleepy time.

Don’t frighten the kids just give them a smile.

Can’t go swimming for the waves are too high.

It’s only the earth dear when all’s said and done.

It’s just the blue planet, see… we orbit the sun.

There’s no need for temperate people to fear.

They’re far, far away from the garden my dear.

Go fly a kite while the winds are so high.

But don’t frighten the children,

Just give them a smile.

I wrote this quite a while ago after the Japanese tsunami.....

...since then edited it...

but I should think ...the people of Somerset are wondering about Noah and whether they should start building those boats.

What can we do?

 I'm sitting here in my safe environment,  living as I learnt at school, in this "temperate land",
I don't know what to do.
There are lots of poems being written at the moment about the Japanese tragedy.  And some are very moving.   I started to put one together myself.
People are philosophising about whether it is significant in the short or the long term future of this earth that we all inhabit.

I'm drawn to Hokusai's wonderful but terrible painting of The Great Wave.
The fragile tiny boat, the size of the wave, the beauty of Mount Fuji in the backround.

Ben Macintyre writes very insightfully in the Times today about this painting and what lies behind it.

I have a painting which I bought some time ago from an Irish artist called Veronica Wallis, and it's simply a woman's handbag, of the Margaret Thatcher type. On the front is a copy of Hokusai's wave.
 Every thing in the painting is 21st C.
Bright saturated colour, simple image of a Craig-Martin type....
.... and then this wave.

I've thought about the earth and how fragile it is and therefore how fragile we are as well.
We move through our every day existence.... like the hand bag!
And the wave is there to remind us ....we are all in this together.

I am but one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
What I can do, I ought to do.
What I ought to do, by the grace of God I will do.

Did Sting get it right all those years ago with his song.."Fragile"?

[ The verse was posted today by..." prayers for the oft travelled road .]