Since last snow fell
On southern lands
Ten thousand more
When what’s now green
Was naught but fields of ice
Or so the legends say
Antarktica
Where all tribes came
Hard to see
In my mind
The numbers
Of the past
What once were billions
Flight reduced
To millions
In the exodus
From the desert sand
Earth had become
To this plot
Of icy rock
Then those millions
Famine culled
And exposure
Due to lack of fuel
Until reduced
Till tallies kept
Tidy in the sealskin books
With finely written script
Then battled for
A thousand years
Conquered plots
Of fertile soil
Until their numbers
Fell to levels perilous
New students of necessity
Learned to live as if endangered species
With so few
The land could raise
More than enough
To feed the huddled tribe
Killing you
To keep what’s mine
Seemed no more
Than certain tragedy
All the while the days grew warm
Warmer and warmer still
When came the year no snowflakes fell
Not two nor one, but none at all
Few dates do we
So fatefully preserve
As the solstice deep in deepest night
The night that winter died
Just as prophesied
Chagrined by fate
We’d set in motion
With our hubris
Thick and callous
Wildlife reduced, so long ago
To rats and mice
Cockroaches and mosquitoes
While gulls pick through our trash
Instead grow corn and wheat
Potatoes, yams and turnip
The trees! Though small
But cows and seals: extinct
Renewed with faith
We renounced our greed
And live within
Earth’s means
Though seem it may
Our grief must keen
We’ve learned to love
What is and what’s to come
On this brief day
Which ends the endless night
The scant low sun illuminates
A single snowflake in the sky
And then a second
And then another
And then a few
‘Tis glorious a sight
Finally
Just as in The Prophecy
Our Earth rebounds
With snow of winters coming
Next, according to
The Book of Seers
We build the boats (from purpose-grown trees)
And sail away (it’s all due north)
If snow is here
Then rain is there
Across the Boiling Sea
And there begins the future
Repopulate
What we destroyed
Afterall
It’s in our nature
Wild Pacific Trail
Ucluelet
Vancouver Island
British Columbia, Canada
Taken during travels, 2017