Touching Glass in a Crowd

The Earth burns and seas
Simmer, choke, seethe,
Smashing warnings
Against the complacent,
Flooding
Sticky-tacky vanities
of rich and poor alike
With implacable indifference,
Erasing intrusions in wilderness
With mountainous, hideous
Flames and heat and smoke.
Hungry cougars flee into a plastic
Melting suburbia ill-suited to
A new reality.

But we still misread the moment.

As usual.

Like Pharaoh,
One plague after another

Bye bye Blackbird

Last spring the laurel hedge by my window was empty
No chirruping, calling, no rustling of glossy leaves
No fledglings edging off the nest onto twigs and then the adjacent fence
No wobbling and frantic flapping as parents patiently cajole
No triumphant flights to the Rose bushes
Only to tumble to the grass
As the chosen twig was too thin

Too hot, too hot

Like tracks in the snow
Little lives go
In our melting

Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond

https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/

NOT AN ICE CASTLE

By Charles Robert Lindholm

I’m Snowbound At Home

And It’s Not An Ice Castle

CLIMATE CHANGE IS UPON US

By Charles Robert Lindholm

Science Tells The Truth

Climate Change Is Upon Us

Lighthearted At The End of the World

Ed: I’m researching one or more works on climate fiction –CliFi–that will tiptoe through a increasingly alarming future. In the process, I’m finding some previous works that, while dark, are also windows into the subject. So, to brighten your day, here are two:

A Song on the End of the World

BY CZESLAW MILOSZ

On the day the world ends|
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

Slow Dance

My land was carved in a slow dance
Glacier in, glacier out

Tale of a Bird

Up I fly
above the clouds,
but the clouds fly
above me too…

Off I go,
yet I don’t,
that’s the beauty
of an edge-less home!

-23.07.17_11:53-

He looks at me
Peeking out from

Our Earth is Slipping

Earth is slipping,

And we are sleeping.

Plains are flooded,

The forest is gutted.

Shortsighted Downfall

Inoperable:
The spread of Climate’s cancer,
While men still suck cigs.

The Lonely Tree

The lonely tree
Stood atop the blasted hill
Stark
Barren branches snatching
Rays from a mist-shrouded sun