Come Along, Let’s Croon Songs Of Restoration And Resilience

By Ndaba Sibanda

Come Along, Let’s Croon Songs of Restoration and Resilience

I long to chant refrains of restoration and resilience.
I envy and envisage the broad and beautiful beam
of nature that embraces and celebrates all the melodies,
energies and synergies aimed at protecting our planet.
I secretly seize the sight, spur and splendor of greenery,
the sensation, scent of the green plants, fauna and flora.
I think highly of the lovely landscapes and tweeting birds.
I’m enthused and optimistic. These are dear moments, dear.
Ours. It’s World Environment Day. It’s today. It’s every day.

I seek more and more band members for this key gig.
I would like to hear the restorative reverberations
across our communities, countries and continents.
Still, these go-getting initiatives are soothing songs
whose spellbinding softness, swiftness and sonority,
all rotate on finding the right poise and compulsion,
on getting the right mix of innovations and strategies,
on funding, publicity, promotion, outreach, advocacy,
on individual, political and financial efforts for success—
for the planet to start to experience palpable, visible impact.

How I would like to see less of the hesitancy, denialism
and trivialization of the topics and themes around the enormity
of restoring ecosystems from the edge of deprivation and damage,
and more about action, people, passion, preservation and proactivity.

I reflect on the combating of desertification and the durations of droughts.
Won’t I sing songs about a drought that is desolating decency in my country—
about deadly droughts that have amplified their frequencies and fears by 29%
since year 2000, and the hair-raising prediction that they could impact more
than three-quarters of the universal population by year 2050? Won’t I sing
a sad song of a pained planet whose 40% of land is corrupted or degraded,
disturbing half of the globe’s inhabitants? However, if more members
join the posse, we shall sing lively songs of restoration and resilience!