PAD Day 22: Happy Earth Day?

It's hard to feel celebratory these days, and some holidays are rolling by with nary a ripple, it seems, like today, Earth Day - the 50th anniversary! I participated in the very first one way back in 1970, planting trees in my dorm court area with a young woman who would that day become my first college girlfriend. I've written about my first Earth Day in poetry a few times already, so I didn't revisit it today.

One has to wonder if this virus isn't Earth's revenge on us for being such jerks to it for so long. One fascinating side effect of this virus: pollution worldwide is way down. In Philadelphia, the nearest large city to me, three major air pollutants are down by as much as 25%. So in a way, maybe it is a "Happy Earth Day" after all.

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "quirk" poem, and (2) write a poem that uses an idiomatic phrase or expression from another language (the more unusual the better). I just incorporated the word "quirky" into the poem, but I had fun with the foreign saying, which really is still one of my favorites. (It also helped me years later with a crossword clue, which was "Yiddish for bed bug".)

Go Bite the Bed Bugs

Our grandmother used to tuck us in and say,

Good night, sleep tight,

don't let the bed begs bite.

It was a quirky little rhyme, one that didn't

make a lot of sense to us - What's a bed bug?

Then they made a comeback, popping up

in unexpected places like luxury hotels,

so we had to address them again,

just like we're addressing an invisible bug

today, a hundred years after the last

such bug killed so many in the world.

I can thank my Jewish college friend

for the gift of another quirky idiom,

one that turns my grandmother's around:

In Yiddish, it's Gai strasheh di vantzen -

literally, "Go threaten the bed bugs,"

meaning, "I'm not afraid of you!"

Her bubbe actually translated it,

"Go bite the bed bugs,"

such a colorful reversal.

It comes in handy today, as I

strap on a mask to enter this world that has

so radically changed in these few months.

I must take precautions, but I can't let

the times dictate my fears.

I want to use it like a mantra,

shout it through the cloth on my face

over and over till I actually believe it,

Gai strasheh di vantzen,

Gai strasheh di vantzen.