Climate Change

Each day something dies out:
a particular breed of sea grass,
a six-legged crawler,
a bird with a blue throat.

I remember my father
scraping sticky insect guts
off the windshield
of a blue Chevy Bonaventure
every time he stopped for gas

but the humid air
doesn’t buzz anymore
and the pine trees
beside my grandfather’s house
are chalky and headless
with something eating them up
from the inside,

and the last time
I drove down to Greyton Beach,
I found more plastic baubles,
more cigarettes in the sand
than seashells and kelp weed.

All this to say
I feel a little blighted too
and the lively things
that crawl and warble
and cry out under my skin
are a little more extinct

and I am trying to keep
a little patch of yellow flowers
blooming in my belly
even against
drought and wildfire.

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