August, 2025

In the 5th grade I won the science fair 
with a project on climate change 
That featured a paper mache ozone layer 
with a giant hole, through which a paper mache sun 
cancered the skin of a Barbie in a bikini 
on a lawn chair, glaciers melting like ice cubes 
in her lemonade.

It was 1987 in a town 
that could have invented red hats
but the school principal gave me a gold ribbon 
and not a single bit of attitude 
about my radical political stance, 

because neither he nor I knew it was a political stance. 
Science had not been fully framed as leftist propaganda. 
The president did not have a twitter feed 
starving the world of facts.

I spent that summer as I had every summer 
before, racing through the forest behind my house
down the path my father called the old logging road 
to a meadow thick with raspberry bushes
whose thorns were my very first heroes
because they did nothing with their life but protect
what was sweet.

Sundays I went to church but struggled 
to call it prayer if it didn’t leave grass stains 
on my knees. Couldn’t call it truth if it didn’t 
come with a dare to crawl into the cave
by the creek and stay put until somebody counted 
all the way to 100. 

As a kid I thought 100 was the biggest number there was. 
My mother absolutely blew my mind 
the day she said, One hundred and one. 

One hundred…AND WHAAAAAT!!!!????

Billionaires never grow out of doing that same math 
with years. Can’t conceive of counting past their own lifespans. 
Believe the world ends the day they do. 
Why are the keys to our future in the hands of those 
who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts? 
Whose greed is the smog that keeps us from seeing 
our own nature, and the sweetness we are here to protect?

Do you know sometimes when gathering nectar 
bees fall asleep in flowers? Do you know fish 
are so sensitive snowflakes sound like fireworks 
when they land on the water? Do you know sea otters 
hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart? 
Do you know whales will follow their injured friends 
to shore, often taking their own lives 
so to not let a loved one be alone when he dies?

None of this is poetry. It is just the earth 
being who she is, in spite of us putting barcodes on the sea.  
In spite of us acting like Edison invented daylight.

Dawn presses her blushing face to my window, 
asks me if I know the records in my record collection 
look like the insides of trees. Yes, I say, 
there is nothing you have ever grown that isn’t music. 
You were the bamboo in Coltrane’s saxophone reed. 
The mulberries that fed the silkworms 
that made the slippers for the ballet. 
The pine that built the loom that wove the hemp 
for Frida Khalo’s canvas. The roses that dyed her paint 
hoping her brush could bleed for her body.

Who, more than the earth, has bled for us? 
How do we not mold our hearts after the first spruce tree 
who raised her hand and begged to be cut 
into piano keys so the elephants can keep their tusks? 

The earth is the right side of history.  
Is the canyon my friend ran to
when no else he knew would echo 
his chosen name back to him.
Is the wind that wailed through 1956 Alabama 
until the poplar trees carved themselves into Dr King’s pulpit. 
Is the volcano that poured the mercury 
into the thermometers held under the tongue of Italy, 
though she knew our fever was why her canals 
were finally running clear. She took our temperature. 
Told us we were too hot, even after 
we’d spent decades claiming she was not. 
Our hands held to her burning forehead, 
we insisted she was fine while wildfires 
turned redwoods to toothpicks, 
readying the teeth of our apocalypse.

She sent a smoke signal all the way from California.
In New York City ash fell from the sky. 
Do you know the mountains of California 
used to look like they’d been set on fire 
because they were so covered in monarch butterflies? 
Do you know monarch butterflies migrate 3000 miles 
using only the fuel they stored as caterpillars in the cocoon?

We need so much less than we take. 
We owe so much more than we give. 
Squirrels plant thousands of trees every year 
just from forgetting where they left their acorns. 

If we aimed to be just half as good
as one of the earth’s mistakes, 
we could turn so much around.
Our living would be seed, the future would have roots.
We would cast nothing from the garden of itself.
and we would make the thorns proud.

That day,
that cloudless Tuesday,
with its Chartres-blue sky,
I could not watch the news.

Instead, I taped the broadcasts
for later watching.

That night,
that quiet night
marred only by the ululation of widows,
I re-wound the tape and watched in reverse

as towers rose from toxic dust
as windows formed from shards of glass and
micrograms of mercury oxide
as confettied papers re-assembled themselves into
binders and file cabinets
and as young men
spread eagled like Icarus
   in casual business attire,
      ascended on plumes of ash
         against the Chartres-blue sky
           and reached their offices,
             just in time
              for that all
               important
10:15 conference call.

Many people will walk in and out of your life,
But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.
Anger is only one letter short of danger.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault;
If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.
Great minds discuss ideas,
Average minds discuss events,
Small minds discuss people.

He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses much more;
He who loses faith, loses all.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.

Learn from the mistakes of others.
You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Friends, you and me.
You brought another friend,
And then there were three.
We started our group,
Our circle of friends,
And like that circle –
There is no beginning or end.

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is mystery.
Today is a gift.
That’s why it’s called the present.

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/pe11.rla.genre.poetry.collforget/forgetfulness-by-billy-collins

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.