Poems for Earth Day

Degree

Look up, the water is rising again; the ocher ocean

is warmer today. The sea mists rise, form grey clouds

named Harvey and Irma and Jose and they reign,

mad royalty, over earth. Hush: The brown waters

rush into tributaries, to rivers, to the troubled chopped 

sea, where carbons heat the surface of salt; one degree,

and it rises hotter, wetter, wilder, whipping waves

of wind, winding toward us, a Kitty, Leo, Marie; a child,

looking at the sea, will die today, Noah, alee.

Plate Histrionics

  

He throws a gold-lamé wedding-set saucer

at me, and spits, “There is no

 global warm-ing.”

Today, Irma evacuates Sarasota as b-

rother Harvey peers and jeers, Ozymandiu-

s-like, Houston and Florida, look upon me.

A-s th-ese li-nes are bro-ken, so the dream-

s of cities, and those hamlets and towns a-

way where we settled to breathe, hear our-

selves think.

Cat 5, there is no stronger. An

evil fidget spinner, Irma swirls out of a wet

hell, and I holler CLIMATE CHANGE.

It is the

imitation

Wedgewood gravy boat, h-

e throws that next, jjjjjjjust before she

A Sonnet Affected by Climate Change

The Earth is mud and shale gas, molten magma, metamorphic—

Oh Sis, Oh Bro—and igneous, blast changing in its last tic,

with a heady burst of ozone, all zones, a corpse that ends in water.

Without us, climate will survive, change fast, outlast—Oh Daughter:

The equatorial world endures, we fall, all bone, all copses sick. 

Paleoclimatology predicts our fate.

Put the conundrum on another generation’s plate?

No, it’s now: in Africa, desertification scorches,

torches farmland. (HUNGER!!!!)

And the people learn of a Great Satan, a nation

that throws away food. Do you see

that they will fight because they must?

Whom will they trust? What is terror after you’ve

watched your child die in the land’s rust?