Tag: climate change

Blues

In the ocean blue
A reflection
Of a sky long lost
To the wake of progress

Ten thousand years
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

I remember a time
When simply breathing
Was dangerous

A time before
The Clean Air Act of 1970
The Environmental Protection Agency
Which gave the Act bite
And enforced its many regulations

I am reminded of that time
When I travel to countries
Which ignore the science
Or have no political will
To preserve the Earth
Which sustains us

I saw the Earth
Photographed from space
And was startled
By the whisper-thin atmosphere

I live on a smooth
Round globe
Of rock and water
With just a thin veneer of gas

There is a future
We have already created
In which the sea
Becomes our enemy

There is nothing
So formidable
As nature

Our bombs
Our industry
Our pillaging

She will adapt
She will survive
She will flourish

In the summertime
The fires come
The forest is
Renewed

But even if
You’re nowhere near
The sky is filled
With smoke

So it began
Some billions of years ago
In pools such as these
On the shores of a boiling sea

From the humblest beginnings
A miracle still
Such simple creatures
Would become the miracle, me