Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.

Derrick Z. Jackson: Administration Cuts Will Leave No Refuge for Wildlife

Smyrna, Delaware—Bald eagles descended to pose on the banks and boulders on the mudflats. Shorebirds bobbed in shallow pools. Great blue herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets snapped up fish … Continue reading

July 21, 2025 · 8 Comments

Aliana Alexandra Coella Exclusa: Puerto Rico’s Resilient History Mirrors the Mangrove

Half of the world’s mangroves are in danger of disappearing. Ensuring their survival is essential to Caribbean resistance movements.

May 20, 2025 · 6 Comments

Rick Campbell: Two Poems

the first bird sings that it’s time
to walk the beach, where gulls don’t sing
and herons stand silent, waiting
for a pilchard to offer itself to God.

April 29, 2025 · 21 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: Wetland Protections Remain Bogged Down in Mystery 

It is mind-bog-gling, syllable pun intended, that scientists still do not know how many wetlands lost protection in last year’s crippling of the Clean Water Act by the Supreme Court. A new … Continue reading

October 21, 2024 · 7 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: Care for Endangered Seabirds Continues Amid a 51-Year Legacy of Optimism

Steve Kress’s smile lit up the dusk as research assistants at least 50 years younger than him regaled him with tales of their vigilance to save tern chicks on Stratton Island, Maine.

August 12, 2024 · 8 Comments

Rick Campbell: Two Poems

Here, in the modern invention
of South Florida, I am trying
to remember a place that never was.

April 17, 2024 · 6 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: US Supreme Court Guts Wetlands Protections

Samuel Alito and his majority are further disconnecting our nation from the science that could help us heal the planet.

June 16, 2023 · 4 Comments

Liza Katz Duncan: Bayshore Elegy

You’d have to be crazy to call home
a strip of sand that will be underwater
in fifty years and oh,
my God, what does that make me?

March 22, 2023 · 6 Comments

T. R. Hummer: William Blake and the Alligator

A young man still, to me he is the Ancient of Days
standing stern in the stern of the skiff, poling us
Over the jade mirror of the Tickfaw River.

June 7, 2022 · Leave a comment

Derrick Z. Jackson: Roe v. Wade Draft Bodes Ill for Air, Wetlands and EPA

If Alito’s draft remains the foundation of the court’s final ruling, then he is also likely prepared to let white-run industry off the hook for fouling the land, air, rivers, and lakes, poisoning communities, which today are disproportionately of color.

May 23, 2022 · 3 Comments

M. Nelson, P. Groffman: Climate change is already disrupting US forests and coasts – here’s what we’re seeing at 5 long-term research sites

Here are snapshots of what we’re seeing firsthand in the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research Network sites, from the effect of increasing fires in Oregon’s Cascades to shifting marine life off the coast of Maine, and surprising resilience in Baltimore’s urban forests.

August 4, 2021 · 1 Comment

Derrick Z. Jackson: How Boston’s Charles River went from polluted to pristine

What the cleanup tells us about the power of Federal waterway protections.

July 12, 2021 · 2 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: There’s No Compromising on Science When it Comes to Protecting the Nation’s Rivers and Streams

Unlike the previous administration, the Biden administration must prioritize science and water quality over the demands of big industry.

May 28, 2021 · 2 Comments

Jeffrey Harrison: The Light in the Marsh Grass

we gave up trying to explain it, gave ourselves
to it—as if we had ingested some hallucinogen
that opened our eyes to what was there all along

November 10, 2020 · 1 Comment

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