Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Good Bones
by Maggie Smith

When my step-daughter turned 21 last year, I wrote this poem in her guest book as well as a personal note; the world is at least half terrible — I said in a part of it echoing Maggie’s line — which means it’s also half good. Your job is to make your world beautiful.

We are in the middle of an uprising right now and what we see are people who tired but are still trying to make our world beautiful. Black lives matter.

COVID-19 has increased our connection via the internet; zoom catch-ups and social media interactions. The death of George Floyd has tipped a breaking point and challenged the systems of white supremacy in a way not seen on a world wide scale before. More and more people are vocal; black lives matter.

There have been civil rights protests in the USA for years, taking different forms. But the urgent request from Black people to be treated as equal, as though their lives matter, has gone largely ignored by the white population who benefit from the systems that were set up by whites to favour whites.

In Australia, we have a similar issue. And if we don’t resolve it now, we will still be experiencing the same dysfunction and loss of Aboriginal lives from police brutality and inequality in healthcare in another 200 years. We need to pay attention to what has been brought to our attention over and over again. We need to listen, we need to understand and we need to act. We need a treaty. Black lives matter.

If you want to know more about what that means, please check out the following site.
https://www.aboriginalvictoria.vic.gov.au/treaty