Climate Minute #4 A Poem — When we tell the story
Climate Minute #4
A poem – When we tell the story
In the U.S., the congressionally mandated Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) report was released last November, based on work by scientists from all over the U.S. and the Caribbean synthesizing published research for regional and topic-specific chapters. For the first time, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – through the U.S. Global Change Research Program – included the arts in the process, to encourage wider participation in the National Climate Assessment and help us visualize the impacts of climate change. Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States was created by its publisher, Paloma Press, as a sort of companion to NCA5.
A sample from the book:
When we tell the story
Of how we survived the great collapse
it won’t be only kindness
or sacrifice or banning single-use plastics.
It will be imagination.
It will be flock and lift,
pull each other
up from what’s broken.
Systems in collapse
don’t stop collapsing.
No one can stomach the loss
of what must be lost
and so we hasten collapse
clinging to systems too heavy to hold.
We wrestle with Capital’s tooth and claw,
our own creation turned against us,
all the while anchored to ground
soaked in blood.
Consider the gulls
who soar on vast wings,
dipping down to feed
taking only what they need.
Birds adapt over time
to what is real.
We are now the ostrich,
knees bent backward, running
Always earth-bound.
Afraid,
we bury our head.
But all creatures can evolve.
This is our invitation.
When we tell the story
of how we survived the collapse,
we might say:
like birds, we learned
to move as one.
We grew lighter
And lengthened our wings.
Anna Sims Bartel
From Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States
Michael Moodie, on behalf of CFREE
CFREE (Carbon-Free Residential, Everything Electric)
is a working group of the Lincoln Green Energy Committee.
