Alte # 7 EARTH
Matthew Septimus
Earth
by Jessica de Koninck
Dripping, naked her child rose from the waters
Dripping, naked her child rose from the waters
Dripping, naked her child rose from the waters
Droplets, strewn from fingers, scattered everywhere
Droplets, dripped from nostrils, scattered everywhere
Her babies rolled in her mud banks
They suckled on sunshine and rainfall
She swaddled her infants in marsh grass
They slept in her caves and her meadows
And then the rain stopped falling
And then the river stopped flowing
Her children grew thin, grew tired
Their eyes turned wide and hollow
They lay in the dry weeds moaning
They held out their bony fingers
Their mouths too weak to suckle
They died with their eyes open
She raked them away like dry leaves
The sound was like footsteps or laughter
There was no water for tears
Harry Wilks
Weather
by Margaret R. Sáraco
Here in my North Jersey town,
rains swell then recede, we fear
gray skies, day after day
torrential downpours forecast
like Florida, but we don’t
live in Florida, with no
palm trees, nor ocean nearby,
just frequent, continual
worrisome rainy days.
Mornings like this I want to
stay inside, read, steep pot-
after-pot of tea, wait
for sun and dry days.
I wonder if plants in our garden
can be found in the rainforest?
Lawrence Bush
by Greta Thunberg
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
Tamar Zinn
by Lawrence Bush
Stupid fucking human beings. We can’t stop ourselves from our hierarchical nonsense, from eating everything in sight, from failing to see past the tips of our noses.
Brilliant, magnificent human beings. We cultivate so much beauty and usefulness from the treasures of our planet, so much knowledge about how the miracles of life actually work, so much reason to hope.
Well, what’s it going to be? Can we become Earthlings, or are we going to become refugees with no place to go?
Getting old involves understanding what is being lost. It’s not just the days of nimbleness, sharp recall, perfect hearing, and other individual qualities. It’s also the days when 90º in the summer was a rare event; when more species of creatures and plants were being discovered than lost; when glaciers hadn’t melted and never would.
Yet even knowing what we’re losing and what we’re likely to go through, we still want to be around to see more. To taste more. To feel more. How about: To do more?
Feeding the Fire
by Helen Engelhardt
1
Let air lick the twigs
offer whatever is eager
to burst into flame
excite the reluctant logs
to sing in tongues.
2
Cords of wood release
essential oils:
protection, wisdom, peace
drift up the chimney when
rowan, hazel, maple
are on the grate.
3
Here’s where we feed
ourselves stories and songs,
encyclopedias of longing.
Our memories crackle in the heat.
4
This busy circus of sparks
our ancient entertainment.
We are all on fire
aspiring to light.
Maxine Shore
Ode to a Prickly Cucumber
by Jane Schulman
In other-than-Covid years, my cucumbers
grow spindly, yellowish, and C-shaped.
This year I had time to double-dig the garden
with chicken manure and by early May
the soil was crumbly and warm and the plants
set deep roots. A high trellis jammed
in the soil along the row of seedlings
looked like a farmer’s fantasy.
Would the shoots grasp even those first rungs?
Yet now, they reach the trellis top – shoot
over and around, tendrils grab tomato vines,
smother peppers, slither to strangle arugula.
Yellow flowers bloom and long, thin emerald
cucumbers hide in the broad leaves. Abbie climbs
the brick wall and steps into the garden
to see what she can find.
She spies a cucumber hanging in the vines
and yanks one off. The prickly brambles
pierce her skin and she pulls away –
then reaches again – then pulls
back – and then yanks it off to hold it high.
I rub off the brambles and we Bite – Crunch –
Swallow - MMMM!!! A moment stolen
from Covid’s doleful clutches.
Impossible to Describe This Day
by Esther Cohen
To tell you what beauty looks like
how it feels sitting on this porch a porch
to explain what it feels like to sit
where I always sit every single day even on days
that aren’t nearly as beautiful as this one
today here I am on my springless Freudian
chaise covered
in blankets a corner of life facing trees
a field and a sky that is the same
as sky astounding all day no matter what happens
and there are birds and birds and a light that
turns day into a very good dream.
Doug Eisman
Surviving Pandemic
by Jessica de Koninck
It’s summer. We eat dinner on the porch,
watch the business on the buddleia, formal
name for butterfly bush. My granddaughters
are here. Maayan pays close attention
to insect action. She observes, she reports
butterfly and bee are best friends.
When she asks me where they live I answer
bee lives in a hive, but I don’t know about
butterfly. She is certain butterfly goes home
with bee. That sounds happily right to me.
Public Service Art
Insects
by Mikhail Horowitz
splinters of ferocity
ravening shards of consciousness
more alien to us than martians
their sheer prolixity drives us mad
they can’t be stopped
they can’t be squashed or squelched
they cannoth be assimilated
trained like dogs or made to stop
for lights
they were here before us
they were hungry before us
and in the end
they’ll chomp gnash gnaw
consume our homes
our TV guides
our tablets
of the law