[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.]
Photo by Benjamin Lizardo on Unsplash
Horizon to horizon,
the sky is covered with haze —
smoke from faraway wildfires.
Heat bakes the landscape.
The grass dies back.
The hot nights exhaust me;
no air conditioning means little sleep.
I’m warned not to walk outside,
that the smoke from burning trees
has a lethal particulate in it.
I smoked tobacco for sixty years,
and that damage added to the smoke
from trees on fire could spell
the end of my breathing career.
I start to panic,
take a deep breath to calm myself,
and realize that deep breathing
may do me more harm than good.
A week after the haze began,
rain falls, the smoke disappears,
and the heat wave is broken.
I breathe easily once more,
but I ask myself,
What comes next?
One clunate-change catastrophe
follows another.
As the years go by,
my life becomes more fragile,
and the life of Earth
becomes more fragile too.
We’re in synchronous waning.
But my heart and my trust
in the Great Round of life-death-life
tell me that Earth
will wax again, will become
resplendent as a full moon
on a summer night.
Humans come and go,
but our Mother knows how to create
new life on our home ground.
Meet Mago Contributor, Harriet Ann Ellenberger – Return to Mago E*Magazine
I am always heartened when I read a poem or story that includes and focuses on the Earth’s present travail since except for a minute few the climate crisis has become virtually invisible THANK YOU HARRIET