What Kind of Mover are You?

I wrote this poem for our new young MP two weeks after our face-to-face meeting where I was asking him to support the Climate and Nature Bill. I suspect that he does not receive many poems in this way, so perhaps it will have an emotional impact and he may just turn up to the second reading on January 24 2025. An alternative title could be Wonder and Awe because that phrase turns up three times - once in each verse.

What Kind of Mover are you?

Are you moved by the young child,
his scuttling fast crawl across the floor,
Eyes wide, face upward and alert
full of Wonder and Awe,
A study of innocent beauty?
What courage do we need
To make all those changes and
Give him a place in our future.

A warm September evening
walking in the Community garden
Device in hand set to Soprano
Pipistrelle frequency.
Out of the glowing darkness
A cacophony of urgent clicks
Flashes of movement in the torch light.
What Wonder and Awe for senses
And creatures so different
Yet just there, touching our reality!

We are Out of Time, and cannot push
Our problems onto our children,
No longer can we run down the present
In the name of the future.
“Never doubt that a small group
of determined people can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only
thing that ever has”*
We need Political Courage,
Wonder and Awe to meet
The Existential Crisis. Now.

What kind of Mover are you?

Margaret Mead, Anthropologist