Bad News.

I wrote this last week when I couldn’t find inspiration to write my daily haiku.

How is a mind blank

Yet crammed with unbidden thoughts

Crowding out poems.

At the same time, I have been thinking about this week’s prompt for Storyworth, “How do you get your news? What news interests you?”

All news interests me. I read the NY Times and my local newspaper, The Berkshire Eagle, daily. I follow NPR.  But right now, I wish I could block it all out. The war in Ukraine, climate change, racism, antisemitism, misogyny, conspiracy theories, partisan politics. COVID...Every time I look at this list, I remember another category of bad news.  

I am certainly aware that I read/watch the news from a position of relative safety and comfort. Yet I feel assaulted. Ignorant demagogues, including the former president of the United States, have ripped off the veneer of civilization. Everything I have fought for, like a woman’s right to choose, is in jeopardy. Schools and synagogues in communities like mine and even the U.S. Capital have been terrorized. A deranged dictator has hinted at nuclear warfare.  Cyberwarfare may soon affect our daily lives. The lull in COVID will end and we are unprepared for another surge. And did I mention that the ocean and the Everglades will inevitably merge to flood Miami, a short distance from where I am staying this winter?     

Is it any wonder that I would prefer to hide my head under a pillow?

But I keep reading. And I make my voice heard, I donate, I act. And I write poems to preserve my sanity in an insane world.