​

Last Safe Habitat, by Dr. Craig Santos Perez, 2022.

 

I don't want our daughter to know

that Hawai'i is the bird extinction capital

of the world. I don't want her to walk

around the island feeling haunted

by tree roots buried under concrete.

I don't want her to fear the invasive

predators who slither, pounce,

bite, swallow, disease, and multiply.

I don't want her to see paintings

and photographs of birds she'll never

witness in the wild.

I don't want her to

imagine their bones in dark museum

drawers. I don't want her to hear

their voice recordings on the internet.

I don't want her to memorize and recite

the names of 77 lost species and subspecies.

I don't want her to draw a timeline

with the years each was “first collected”

and “last sighted.”

I don't want her to learn

about the Kaua'i 'O'o, who was observed

atop a flowering 'Ohi'a tree, calling

for a mate, day after day, season after

season, because he didn't know he was

the last of his kind—

until one day, he disappeared,

forever, into a nest of avian silence.

I don't want our daughter to calculate

how many miles of fencing is needed

to protect the endangered birds

that remain. I don't want her to realize

the most serious causes of extinction

can't be fenced out.

I want to convince her

that extinction is not the end. I want

to convince her that extinction is

just a migration to the last safe habitat

on earth.

I want to convince her

that our winged relatives have arrived

safely to their destination: a wondrous

island with a climate we can never

change, and a rainforest fertile

with seeds and song.

​

Lost, by Eric Abalajon, 2022.

​

The news immediately clarified

             that no person was hurt

and no property was damaged

             by the cow

when it wandered

             into the stretch of Diversion Road

                                                                                 one afternoon.

What wasn't seen,

             or what escaped the minds of 

                          people in traffic;

​

is that there's still patches of Mandurriao

with grasses that are taller than people.

​

             Highway noise

is the one                        out of place.

​

        

​

An Uncertain Future, by Mary V. Botten, 2022.

​

Moving together, we pass through time,

Step by step, no reason nor rhyme.

Pondering on our existence here,

For nothing is certain, nothing is clear.

​

There are cracks in our foundations, cracks in our base,

This eroding, fragile world in which we are placed.

Immeasurable repairs are needed to restore

Our amazing earth that we should adore.

​

I feel we are breaking in every which way,

Moral fibre stretched thin and beginning to fray.

We have the gift of a life, a planet too,

Treasured by many but sadly too few.

​

Staring Through The Window by Justin Raphael Lopez Gutierrez, 2021.

​

My child, sit by my side,
have a look outside.
What do you see?

The sun and the sands,
the winds and the waves,
the grass and the trees;

They are our responsibility,
yet we have lost the ability
to maintain the beauty bestowed before us.

This magnificent land is ours,
yet we fail to find the hour 
to stop and realize the condition we have left it in.

My child, sit by my side,
have a look outside.
What can you say?

I can only pray 
that there be a day
where you can gaze upon the bluest of skies just as I once did;

Where you can experience vitality
from this grim reality 
that we have turned our land into;

Where the scent of the meadows 
suppress the sorrows
that we've sown on our own soil.

My child, sit by my side,
have a look outside.
What must we do?

Restoration is due; 
return earth to its true
colors and vibrance and beauty and grace.

Evoke the natural ways,
bring back the breathable days
when the air was pure and fresh and crisp and clear.

It's time to embrace 
positive change,
to shatter the pattern
and break the cyclical destruction 
of a home undeniably, unquestionably, irreplaceable.

And I know that we are able
to achieve the sustainable
and throw away the days where disposables were our disabilities.

There is no anonymity.
With one collective identity,
we are all accountable
to this sizeable responsibility

So my child, I tell you,
let the rivers flow,
let the flowers grow,
let the people know,
that the earth needs its glow.

It's an awakening
my child, are you listening?
Beyond that window 
is a tomorrow full of opportunity,
and today, we must march in unity
because that is what it takes to rebuild this land.

It's at the palm of our hands
and it's time to take the ultimate stand 
for a creation so magnificent.
This world is at war, yet again, the victims are the innocent;
There is no moment to be indifferent.
This land needs to heal, we need not be the impediment
And one thing is evident:
My child, we need our future
But it needs us to be present.

​

Speaking Tree by Joy Harjo, 2015. (U.S. Poet Laureate, Myskoke Creek nation)

 

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree —Sandra Cisneros

​

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—

​

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—

​

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—

​

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—

​

I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—

​

What shall I do with all this heartache?

​

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—

​

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

​

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable

​

An Earth Song by Langston Hughes, 1925

​

It's an earth song,—
And I've been waiting long for an earth song. 
It's a spring song,—
And I've been waiting long for a spring song. 
    Strong as the shoots of a new plant 
    Strong as the bursting of new buds
    Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother's womb. 
It's an earth song, 
A body song, 
A spring song, 
I have been waiting long for this spring song

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens) by Craig Santos Perez, 2016 (poets.org)

​

I

Among starving polar bears,

The only moving thing

Was the edge of a glacier.

​

II

We are of one ecology

Like a planet

In which there are 200,000 glaciers.

​

III

The glacier absorbed greenhouse

gases.

We are a large part of the biosphere.

​

IV

Humans and animals

Are kin.

Humans and animals and glaciers

Are kin.

​

V

We do not know which to fear

more,

The terror of change

Or the terror of uncertainty,

The glacier calving

Or just after.

​

VI

Icebergs fill the vast ocean

With titanic wrecks.

The mass of the glacier

Disappears, to and fro.

The threat

Hidden in the crevasse

An unavoidable cause.

​

VII

Oh vulnerable humans,

Why do you engineer sea walls?

Do you not see how the glacier

Already floods the streets

Of the cities around you?

​

VIII

I know king tides,

And lurid, inescapable storms:

But I know, too,

That the glacier is involved 

In what I know.

​

IX

When the glacial terminus broke,

It marked the beginning 

Of one of many waves.

​

X

At the rumble of a glacier

Losing its equilibrium,

Every tourist in the new Arctic

Chased ice quickly.

​

XI

They explored the poles

For offshore drilling.

Once, we blocked them, 

In that we understood

The risk of an oil spill

For a glacier.

​

XII

The sea is rising.

The glacier must be retreating.

​

XIII

It was summer all winter

It was melting

And it was going to melt

The glacier fits

In our warm-hands.

​

Maura Dooley, Still Life with Sea Pinks and High Tide, 2016

​

Thrift grows tenacious at the tide’s reach.
What is that reach when the water
is rising, rising?

Our melting, shifting, liquid world won’t wait
for manifesto or mandate, each
warning a reckoning.

Ice in our gin or vodka chirrups and squeaks
dissolving in the hot, still air
of talking, talking.

 

Matthew Olzmann, Letter to Someone Living 50 Years from Now, 2017

It begins with,

"Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,

the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations

of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction..."

For entire poem

 

Lynna Odel, November, 2020

It begins with,

"If I can't save us

then let me feel you

happy and safe

under my chin..."

For entire poem

​​

Molly Fisk, Particulate Matter,2018 (about the CA wildfires)

 It begins with,

“If all you counted were tires on the cars left in driveways and stranded beside the roads…” 

For entire poem