How To Communicate Climate Change

Alliteration just won’t do it.
Numbers about record years –
This one worse than last,
The last more awful than before:
More godawful than before.

“Table water, rivers shrinking…”
We can’t take it in.  
Had they words like:
‘Foods stop growing, seeds stop sowing,
Banks have nothing; people starve” -
You know, basic stuff,  
We just
Might ‘get it’.

Hard to feel for, God knows where -
Fires in LA, Oregon,
Igniting all at once;
And they’re not war zones!

Choppers hurling water
Onto states the size of galaxies.
Helpless, you’re de-sensitized.
(your only arms against disaster).

Have the ‘big guys’ seen the chain?
Folk on the move, the extra heat, the lessening rain?
Its flip side, folk closed in, the Arctic drain,
Shops closed down or vandalized?
Life’s fundamentals random-ized?

How get them? Fundamentals.
Goat, pig, cow, tree, flower, how…
Urgent treatment, urgent action;
Urgent sense of the connection.  
It’s a matter of disclosure and, of course,
Compassion.

How To Communicate Climate Change 6.14.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin