All That We Could Have Been

Do you remember the rains of our childhood?
The ones we met with smiles and laughter?
Where we’d open our mouths and face the clouds
and drink in the nourishing water?

We used to jump in puddles and play in the mud.
Something our kids will never enjoy.
No one cared about pollution’s effects,
until water was the thing to avoid.

Earthworms used to squiggle through the soil,
but now their bodies lay bloated and stilled.
And fish float dead on toxic lakes,
each life’s purpose left unfulfilled.

Do you remember water’s potential?
Its life-giving and sustainable power?
Remember the beauty of the oceans
and the morning dewdrops on flowers?

Lessons finally learned, too little, too late.
We, the enemy, our own formidable foe.
All that we could have been or done,
we, ever the fools, will never know.

(Published in Anthropocene: Poetry about Environment, 2022)

Object

Heaven and earth collide
Abide irreparable harm
Alarms silence the clamor
Hammers bind the will
Quills ink the last
Pasts haunt their present

For the fiery crime, a godly gift
But beware the inherent malevolence
Concealed by beauty and shapely shift
Lies the sex intimate with Sorrow and Death

Within her vessel
Wrestle worldly tragedies
Comedies of kings conceited
Defeated by seduction
Compunction followed by guiltless assail
Hail, yet, for the ignorant male felled by innocent female

Many names are known of her
first as Pandora or Eve
And before the end of time
We shall know more to grieve

And so it goes as our burden to bear
As subjects of virtue, befitting and kept
Until we raise our voices and mightily swear
And with fervent disobedience…object.

Sabina's Spell

I inhale the spray of the salty sea
and watch as seagulls soar above me.
Clouds gather amid the din
as raindrops fall and kiss my skin.
We seek shelter amid ancient trees,
enfolded by leafy canopies.
I hide you from the gaze of time
and speak spells line by line:

For what magic there remains, let it not be constrained.
Guard us from omens of doom as sinister forces loom.
Protect us from the bow revealed by storm’s shadow
For what grace there is to spare, may it gather here.