We’ve had enough! We’re taking it back!
The earth once belonged to the docile and us—
the wild—but no more will you, the puffed-up,

two-legged man, raze our forests and our swamps,
no more spew your chemicals into our homes
or fell our forests and set our lairs ablaze,

In third grade, one afternoon,
we were ushered into the auditorium
for a 16mm animated film
about dinosaurs.
As comets and asteroids fell,
pocking the earth,
so did the huge creatures,

They tell me that I’m not dying.
That my limbs aren’t burning.
That my face isn’t as ashen as I make it out to be.
But what do they know –
the false prophets with their loose lips, tailored suits, and painted-up lies?

these days the smiles are scripted
to induce the flow of joy
in hopes
they amplify an initial step
to overcome the inertia
of years of climate induced apathy
i still remember the days
when i did not have to remind myself
to smile or breathe deep

In a cold winter thought
I grabbed the earth by its head of trees
and ripped upward to free the firmament
beneath.
No earthworms or other secrets.
Human figures entwined
in angered roots.

I will never see your secret spaces
listen to the bold songs of birds
or the screeches of primate tribes
in trees along slow muddy waters.
Nor will I spy the silhouette
of the silent jaguar’s shadow

Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos

How can two words capture the magic of such a creature?
How can a name hold the essence of anything? I wonder, cradling
huckleberries from the bush, how to express the way my hands
are left a misty purple,

Let’s go to the beach today
It’s closed, I know, the Great Highway, the great expanse
But I know a way in-
I’m a scientist.
I’ll show them my credentials, say you’re my assistant

We’re here to study the shoreline, what’s left of it

They’ve painted your tank blue so you forget
how your paws flung moonstone stars across the
Northern Lights, how your cubs, seal-small, clung to
falling spires of snow and scarred, songless ice,

I served 20 years 4 months 3 days
for a theft I didn’t commit.
Solitary. Abuse. Neglect.
Suffering. Shame.
Victim of mistaken identity.
Suggestive questioning. Self-interest.
Gross negligence. Prosecutorial misconduct.

Mascara swirling down her face,
the woman with sagging eyelids

stands on the chipped concrete
like the tall factory pipe
connected to the power plant machines.
She doesn’t think about her plight,
only the fact that she must make the ends meet
in order to feed her 2 children.

Our kids march in the streets for Climate Change.
They’re chanting we are running out of time
disturbed by watching all the rising seas
from hurricanes, huge fires, torrential rains.
Their fears and tears give me a bit of hope
that our vast world will flourish when I’m gone.