The melt is on
Great swathes of glacial freeze coming unstuck
Flowing downhill to destiny
Many drops
For even all the seven oceans to swallow
Making the deep blue sea deeper still
Mixing up global chemistry
Shifting currents in new directions
Crawling up shorelines
Burying beaches
New King Canutes issue vain commands
With as much effect as the original, ultimately
Some places engineer barriers, seawalls
New structures to contain the tide
Some places are abandoned
Crumbling seaward
Or ripped apart in storms
Under the waves
Migrations and extinctions
As aquatic ecosystems fail
But the party continues
Everyone distracted by petty politics
Mindless crap fed to sheeple by the great bamboozlers
And the oil keeps getting pumped
Coal filled mountains get moved
Moving the resources around gets some attention
As much out of concern with local contamination
As the real problem
Global retribution for anthropomorphic sin
Soon, storms will swirl with abandon
Twister alley will be renamed an expressway
Hurricane season will be held over and they’ll run out of names
Earth will cleanse itself
And us
David Trudel © 2012
sepia toned
we woke up sepia toned
not drained of colour but transformed into shimmers
light lays flat
yellowed as yesterday’s bloodied sun
slipped sideways on a once upon
we call each other asking
“do you see it too?”
and words like apocalypse
like endtimes, like otherworldly
fill our mouths as the sky fills our thoughts
later, waiting for the ferry
I walk the beach up to and under the dock
crosshatched shadows feed the noontime reek of creosote
triggering memories of campfires
then all I smell is the smoke of a carbon sink
a million trees candled in the wind
a burning world
riding thermals down every seaward valley on the coast
until each wave pushes another dragon under
we try to laugh about how strange it looks
as the sun reddens its shroud
today is marked in black
this is the year when winter thins its cool
no matter how golden the sky seems right now
or how wonderful splintered light appears slipping through ashfall
this is no celebration
this is not the same as other years
when autumn slashpiles streamed pendants
today is amber
a moment to hold long enough to remember
how startled we once were
David Trudel © 2015
Leave a comment
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as anthropocalypse, apocalypse, blank verse, climate change, creative writing, creativity, drought, end days, end of civilization, end of the world, environmentalism, forest fires, free verse, global warming, inspiration, metaphor, natural history, pestilence, plagues, poetry, prose poetry, sadness, social activism, social commentary, tranquility, truth, universal peace, wildfires