How to Mend a Broken-Hearted Bird by Caitlin Cacciatore

Dear Friends, Family, Fellow Authors, and Cherished Readers,

I present to you today a poem very near to me. My beautiful and vivacious mother says it is – and remains – her favorite poem.

WhyNot Australia – “How to Mend a Broken Hearted Bird” by Caitlin Cacciatore

By that, she does mean it is her favorite poem – full stop, in the entirety of the English canon.

I wouldn’t go quite that far, and often, we are at odds over this poem. She tends to think of it as my best work; I think I’ve since produced worth with greater depth, mastery, and layering. But she believes its power lies in its heartwrenching simplicity.

This poem, as another of my family members said, is “chilling.”

I hope it inspires you – to be better than you can be.

Are we not all complicit, in some small way, in the forging of broken-hearted birds who are, indeed, the last of their kind? Or do we imagine our role to be so insignificant on the stage of life that we throw our hands in the air and do nothing; worse – deny that there is a mass extinction event taking place at this very moment?

The cruel wheels of industry have given us a sort of utilitarian calculus that enables us to compute the value of cows, pigs, sheep: even people. Zbigniew Herbert’s “arithmetic of compassion” fails.

Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark

– Zbigniew Herbert, “To Marcus Aurelius”

We look up to people who have a high net worth, do we not? These are the same people who have, by means of industry, capitalized on some niche in the market that enables them to be many thousands of times richer than you or I.

These are the same people who have trapped us in social media bubbles and YouTube rabbit holes and who are contributing to a disturbing trend of isolation across generations. We are, as I have said in prior poems, “trapped in prisons of our own devising.” These are the same people who benefit by way of big bucks while Big Pharma fails our loved ones year after year and profits from our illnesses and maladies and modern discontents.

These are the same people who look away when there are atrocities, who live a lofty life on their Mount Olympus, their perspectives so skewed that reality seems but a distant dream. Our world is their world, and their world is theirs for the taking.

It’s a single-minded fallacy that this world can support another century of extraction, exploitation, extinction, settler colonialism, pollution, drilling, fracking, coral bleaching, shipping containers lost at sea, or an even larger Great Pacific Garbage Patch… This way of thinking is antithetical to all life on Earth, including the lives our our children.

I dedicate this poem to M – to all generations of women in my family. My grandmother, the late Marie Cacciatore. My mother, Marah. And my never-to-be-born daughter. Her name? Mariana.

Mariana, after the deepest trench of the darkest sea, because I will always keep her buried deep inside of me.

How to Mend a Broken-Hearted Bird is no mere poem – it is a claxon call for change at all levels of society.

Failing that, it is testimony: testimony for a world we lacked the courage, foresight, and compassion to save. It is testimony for your children’s children. It is unapologetic and speaks to an urgent truth: the world is running out of time to halt, mitigate, and begin to reverse the effects of carbon emissions.

This poem came to me all at once, almost like a dream. First the title. Then the poem, in its entirety.

If you are interested in making a difference and are able to do so, consider writing to your local Senator or Congressman or Mayor to tell them that anthropogenic climate change is a top priority for you and your family. And for all the broken-hearted birds – that their hearts may be mended – consider donating to the World Wildlife Fund.

I wish you clarity and truth,

Caitlin Cacciatore