James Wright: Northern Pike
We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
Luray Gross: Fox Follows
At noon, fox lolls in the sun
rises and trots, pausing now and then
to look my way.
Michael T. Klare: Welcome to a World in Which All Hell Is Breaking Loose
A prelude to what can be expected in the future was provided by the events of August and September 2017, when the military was called upon to provide disaster relief in the wake of three particularly powerful hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — at the very moment California and the state of Washington were being ravaged by powerful wildfires.
Sandra McPherson: On the Abundance of Shell Hinges after a Storm
How have these ligaments
held, for their umbones, each life’s intention
of never letting go?
Michael Simms: Antbed
You may remember my father
died when I was eight
my mother closed up
the house and we went to stay
with my grandmother for a few months
Stephen Pyne: California wildfires signal the arrival of a planetary fire age
We can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions, and sea level changes.
S. B. Merrow: Reading Half-Earth
E.O.Wilson says we already know
what happens to elephants—to us—
when families are broken, when
matriarchs and memories are lost.
James Crews: God Particles
Call them God if you must
these messengers that bring hard evidence
of what I once was and where I have been…
Naomi Oreskes: The Greatest Scam in History
Science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action.
Kathleen O’Toole: Mindful
Samsara’s in every in-breath, each shutter click of attention: first warning
signs of famine, children lining up
for the soldiers’ candy
Dawn Potter: Canto
The season was autumn. Threads of smoke
unwound from the chimneys. Every compass pointed
toward winter.
Michael Simms: Who Will Tell Them?
Goodbye elephant bird
Who frightened Sinbad.
Goodbye wigeon,
Curleau, lapwing, crake.
Goodbye mascarene coot.
Sorry we never had a chance to meet.
Akashinga “The Brave Ones”: Nature Protected by Women
A growing body of evidence suggests that empowering women is the single biggest force for positive change in the world today.
Kristofer Collins: A Poem for Michael Wurster
The only connection I felt to the mills
was to the children of a generation of flayed men
on unemployment, the storefronts boarded…
