journeying

This image is from my neighborhood in the Hudson Valley from a sunset last week where the smoke from Ontario's wildfires thousands of miles away came over to my little pocket of land on the eastern seaboard.
Upon first read, this poem seems to be so introspective from the vantage point that Mary Oliver often addresses in her work. But it could also be interpreted from the lens of a journey towards climate justice. 

The Journey

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life that you could save. Mary Oliver