It's -35 degrees where I am,
Snowing blizzards that block up roads,
Grumbling adults surround me,
I marvel at their ignorance as they say,
"surely...not another snow day,"
It's so strange, surreal - surely they can see...?
I see a planet defiant in the face of the parasite called humanity.

The sky cracks open, bleeding light,
A burning testament to endless night.
Oceans rise to claim their prey,
While ash and bone mark yesterday.

The trees fall silent, their roots are undone,
By hands that choked out the breath of the sun.
Every step feeling like a retreat,
The ground shifting and eroding beneath our feet.

How long have we lived in this lie?
Telling ourselves somehow we DESERVE the sky?
Every truth ignored, every warning dismissed,
Etched in stone on a long, ever growing list.

The rivers scream, but their voices fade,
Drowned by machines and progress made.
Noxious air we take in our heavy heads,
A punishment from the world we’ve struck dead.

We carry this weight, not out of pride,
But because there is simply nowhere left to hide.
The sky does not forgive, it can only endure,
Sole witness to our insatiable yearn to err.

Like a sailor’s warning, a red sky in morning,
Ocean swell rolls like thunder from blue to black

The ebb and flow of the crashing tides plead,
“Turn the heat down. We have been trying to put out the flames for so long”.

How long did the fire have to burn
That not even the cries of Mother Earth could tame it?

Only the void of the moon
And the pain from the sun
Misaligned halo in harmony
Could save us from this tribulation

the earth is an ornament. a terrarium within a glass sphere, a balance, a system. a beauty. filled with light and hope and green and truth and blue and love and grey and orange and red. filling with haze and acidity from our mouths and from our eyes, spilling out into the rivers, our brains and guts splattered on pavement like that salamander who could not move fast enough. we dig out roots and networks beneath our feet and crush them to pump out fog and smoke. our bones are those long buried by time and grief. will that be me one day? will i grow up as something to dribble out of fuel tanks to allow for movement not nearly as fast, not nearly as efficient as i once was? you made me into something less of myself, you tore my tongue from my throat and punctured my eyes and gagged my mouth. you cut my wrists with a butcher knife and froze me solid, you ground me to char and let my blood my blood my blood be your ichor. you who never fought for me in life will fight to tear me limb from limb, pour my soul into 3mL, no, 2L, no, 1.65L, yes, yes, that will be enough. enough for what? to power another mile, another crush, another burn? is that my only future? they say those in glass houses should not throw stones but shattering is all i know to do, if i do not break myself i will stay whole and you will break me all the same.

In sleet and rain of Edinburgh
a cathedral rises from the deeps.
The salt of sea and old coal blur
veil her face in grey-cast sheets.

On her western pediment
within tympanum carved of stone
sits Christ triumphant and in judgement
where he calls us all to atone.

I stand before him, my head bowed
as I contemplate our shared guilt,
with mea culpas weighing on my brow
for the follies fallen man has built.

And so we’re burning Eden down
with flaming swords that we still wield
as once vast forests shrink and brown
and fallow lie once verdant fields.

Where trees once stood, smokestacks rear
their heads belching fumes up high
and in the deeps, the oceansphere’s
no more a garden for octopi.

For in this our earthly commonweal
that was a gift that’s given free
we prove that purgatory’s real
because we ourselves have made it be.

A whisper came from the carved face
to walk into this stony womb
where colored light and incense trace
a path to overcome the gloom:

Forgiveness for our many faults
comes when we change our ways.
There in this temple’s holy vault
I vow to fight Eden’s decay.

In Edinburgh I found Eden
in a vision of what can be.
For we are by no means beaten
and we can do it, you and me.

When the changes come
will winter winds still blow?
What world will we see
as quicksilver higher flows?
When this time is past
will songbirds still be heard?
Will parents still tell children
of the bees and the birds?
Will grandchildren know about
lightning bugs in the dark?
Will lovers still know what’s meant
by butterflies in their hearts?
May those gifts that we leave
for those who come hereafter
not become the close
of this book’s final chapter.

The hulking buildings, sharp and spare,
slow march along the boulevard
through grey foul fumes of city air
as cars give chase on roads of tar —
A single tree stands in the waste,
last stand of nature against our haste

An ice floe made of gathered up snow
that fell over thousands of years:
The snow’s source water had achingly grown
from billions of sweat drops and tears

But now the floe turns and starts to flow
in rivers of thawed out heart-ice
and emotions once caged start to angrily glow —
An avalanche loosed from its vice

The glacier crashes, a tectonic shift
as mountains of blue-white burst the dam:
The inland is transformed by dramatic drift —
Who will find new order in the break of the jam

Climate change

Early autumn, sun’s reticence, too much rain.
Dying roses fall in clusters as fungus pools
in gardens, wetness levening the green.

Frozen mist tightens the air as earth
exhales upwards into a wet bowl
of pale sky, fluid haze heavy with
elements, molecues of water swept
into the gray.

When did autumn come gently,
casting its shadow on an empty bench ?
When did the coolness of air feel
refreshing after summer’s heat ?

Seasons, now violent as war
have overcome the world
with drastic inondation,
acid rain, toxic mud.

How can we look at sunset’s
volatile sky without fear of
tomorrow ?