Paula Aamli, London, UK
Golden Shovel, after Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx
My initial excitement at working there is
gone, obliterated by compromises. A
harsh critic of my life might define
this discomfort as envy, a failure to finesse
my way past the point that delineates
deciders from decided-abouts. Between
these two realms is a vast chasm and I agree,
younger me longed to live in clover
with the higher-ups. Now I understand,
even my own middling life looks like a
fantasy. Random chance was my friend.
Today, in mid-life, in central London, I stand
staring at the plants in our garden. There's
a foxglove exploding with purple bells, so alive.
All week I have watched it unfurl its finery,
slowly stretching from the leafiness
of its broad base, up towards the blue line
of the sky. In the brief beat between
glory and decay is this plant's reality.
Its whole point of being is to be, and
this is what I envy. Whilst I pretend
to be at peace, I have lost faith in the grand
unfurling of purpose through history. Youth
wants so much, strives so much and never
believes in age, death or failing. You know
that's how youth is supposed to be, still
certain of a place in the unfolding story.
Youth's future is a promise we should not breach
but our youth see an end approaching. They
know we will have to teach ourselves to stop
choking the ocean and uprooting the trees. If
the old story of repentance was ever true, it
is surely true today. Is there a way to wash
our carbon sins away? That would be worth
the cost of conversion. Can we change the
course we have been setting? An up-hill
path, steepening the more we resist the climb.
I am encouraged by the rising clamour. There's
“boardroom chit-chat” about nature, perhaps a
sign of hope, whatever the motivation. Fine
if capitalism “saves the planet”, if we confine
the level of pay-off flowing to the rich? Holiness
has always been a negotiation between
need and expectation. And still the foxglove
continues to unfurl, to make its brief stand,
stretching vainly to connect earth and sky. A
yearly ritual in which Nature happily wastes
energy from the sun on this brief burst of
life-becoming-compost. And tell me, at your
own end, will you account so well for your time?
Dr Paula Aamli is a Humanities graduate with a Masters in Sustainability and a Doctorate in Organisational Change. Paula is originally from Wales, then Manchester, now living in London, UK. Paula's doctoral thesis, “Working through climate grief: A first-person poetic inquiry”, explores individual and institutional responses to the emerging climate crisis, using arts-based research and poetry. Paula has had poems published, or accepted for publication, in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Dissonance Magazine, Paddler Press, Shot Glass (a poetry journal of short verse), and Wingless Dreamer.