On April 3, RPA’s Shifting Systems Initiative convened more than a hundred funders, practitioners, and allies on climate action at the 2025 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England. The event, titled “Strengthening Countervailing Forces Through Climate Philanthropy,” drew participants from around the world. The room overflowed with diverse perspectives and expertise related to the climate emergency, from narrative change to multilateralism to business leadership. Poet and philanthropic advisor Josiane Smith opened the session by reading two of her poems–The Nightingale and Do We Have Enough Faith? As Josiane shared, the poems were “read as an invocation, and blessing, to bring the voice of nature into the room and to remind us that we have what it takes for the path forward.” The dialogue that followed made visible the power of connection and imagination for shifting systems, and the abundance of climate solutions and wisdom for the times ahead.

 

Josiane has given us permission to make both poems available, in the hopes that they can be enjoyed by attendees and shared with new audiences, bolstering confidence that a climate-resilient tomorrow is possible and on its way.

 

The Nightingale

Josiane Smith

Inside the tree is a life force

coursing through the maze

of its sap filled veins

highway current speeding

up and down, up and down

up and up and out; the sky

is beyond the clustering

of darkened leaves

beyond that even, is the blue

Southend sea, sung to

by the nightingale who knows

which tales you wish to hear

like balm to a restless soul

like rest to a running spirit

like spirit for a losing fight

like fight for a life

on a planet in constant renewal.

 

Do we have enough faith?

Josiane Smith

faith in the vision

faith in the search

faith in the mission

faith in our work

*

faith in our power

faith in our voice

faith in our failure

faith in our choice

*

faith in the movement

faith in the team

faith in action

faith in the dream

*

faith in the system

faith for the fight

faith in transformation

faith and foresight

*

faith in the data

faith in the vote

faith in the science

faith in the lifeboat

*

faith in the new world

faith in the wound

faith in the untold

faith in the truth

*

faith in justice

faith in a side

faith amidst crisis

faith that is blind

*

faith in the ordinary

faith in the small

faith in the findings

faith right after the fall

*

faith in the stranger

faith in the doubt

faith in our neighbour

faith that casts out

*

faith in the corner shop

faith in the leader

faith in the poet

faith in the teacher

*

faith in our children

faith in our guides

faith in our ancestors

faith in the signs

*

faith in our loved ones

faith when it’s hard

faith in ourselves

faith this will pass

*

faith in humanity

faith even through fear

faith in community

faith in our prayer

*

faith when it’s urgent

faith when it ends

faith in emergent

faith to start again

*

faith in the process

faith that is tested

faith in the payoff

faith that’s invested

*

faith in the quiet

faith that is found

faith that is private

faith that’s homebound

*

faith in seedlings

faith in spring

faith in the winters

faith in the wins

*

faith is needed

faith is our fuel

when faith is repeated

faith is renewal.

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