Quietly they wait
at their table, with
exquisite little bowls
expectantly displayed,
etched with eternal
secret lines of a
fading language of
the jungle, Earth’s
echoes lost on a
distracted herd
just passing thru,
rapt in thoughts of
dwindling diesel,
soon the boats
from distant shores,
bearing cheap baubles,
shopping trophies,
may not arrive
at all any more,
“What will they do?”

The ladies of the
Amazon, who fight to
stop the cutting of
trees to drill the oil,
(when they’re not
making bowls to
try to sell to the
we-don’t-care-crowd),
doing their best
to understand, but
surely they cannot;
there’s a sadness
beneath bold tattoos
that frame cautious eyes
and wan smiles, as
they wait for customers
who are just killing time
’til slow boats arrive
with plastic throwaways
stamped “Made In”.

What kind of world
is this?

I wrote “Ladies of the Amazon” in November 2022, due to a fleeting fuel crisis. Now due to tariffs, the poem is coming true. The boats aren’t coming. It makes me wonder about the shift that will happen in the world, not only in an economic way. Perhaps we will start to carefully examine what humans are producing, and the value of it.

© Susan L Hart / Photo is courtesy Bill Salazar, Pexels