Inverted World

In an upside down, topsy-turvy world,
how would we perceive ourselves?
If I walked across the ceiling
would my head's contents empty
across the kitchen floor?
Would the cat lick them up
only to be caught in the act
by a mouse and pulled down a hole 
where badgers and wombats
beckon motley creatures
to safety out of a raging blaze
that savages a country
inhabited by ecologists and children
while the political descendant 
of George Washington tells the world
(as everybody knows) most of this is illusion?

All I know is my head hurts.

In the mirror, we walk on floors
where cats catch mice who inhabit holes, 
badgers hunker down in sets
and wombats live overseas in places 
where fires destroy children's futures 
as ecologists warn politicians
to be wary of the railings
of supreme heads of state against
science-based research
alerting us to a planetary disease 
whose break-through pains cause
cyclones and fires across continents,
swirling plastics beneath seas,
and dropping survival rates among species
(even as we edit images of mass migration
and death to exclude human extinction.)

©Janet Henderson 13th January 2020

Partly inspired by reading Eve Ensler's wonderful letter addressed to Mother Earth which she wrote as an addendum to The Apology, Bloomsbury 2019 here. 'I am the reason the birds are missing...I am made of dirt and grit and stars and river, skin, bone, leaf, whiskers and claws. I am part of you, of this, nothing more or less. I am mycelium, petal pistil and stamen...I am energy and dust. I am wave and wonder. I am an impulse and an order...I am all your missing creatures, all the sweet birds ever born. I am daughter. I am caretaker. I am fierce defender. I am griever...I am here now, Mother. I am yours. I am yours.'