finch sunflower jeffreyw
First the Flood, then the Fire, the Fire, the Flood, the Earth’s Shawl of Air, the Hunger
by Christine Gelineau

Exhausted survivors of Harvey survey the mud, the ruin,
the bloom of mold already decomposing
what had taken a lifetime to compose, even as Florida
and the Caribbean batten down, sandbag, pray :
Irma raging, Jose cocked and coming; while
the Columbia River Gorge, Yosemite, Glacier,
Seely Lake, Montana, California, Idaho, Oregon,
Washington, British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, erupt
into our worst nightmares of hell : unleashed, devouring,
everywhere not yet on fire a purgatory of acrid air and ash :
even indoor smoke alarms in the cities keening
for the greenwood world turned to smoke : which does not begin
to account for Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, inundation,
mudslides : or Kenya where the people have begun
to hunt and eat the hyenas and vultures
—the only creatures to thrive in a famine, all
that is left to eat before death.

Meanwhile, the ones who imagine themselves
as Zeus sit on their mountaintops relentless
in their refusal to make connection,
ruthless against their own
grandchildren, and mine.

Here where I am in the yet-to-be-ravished
zone what am I to make then
of the ministrations of goldfinch
to the open countenances
of sunflowers, their swoop, soft cries;
of the praise song of grass blades
under the palm of the late summer
afternoon; of evening’s pastel
flush, the gathering dark, the shimmer
of the skies, their dusting of stars?

PHOTO: Mr. Finch admires Ms. Flower’s choice of color. Photo by Jeffreyw.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This series asks how to heal the earth. The most obdurate obstacle is politics—greed and short-sightedness. The poem points this out while suggesting it is nature we need to turn to, to listen to, if the most invasive species of all—homo sapiens—are to be kept from destroying themselves.

Gelineau

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christine Gelineau is the author of three full-length books of poetry, most recently CRAVE from NYQ Books.  Other books include the book-length sequence APPETITE FOR THE DIVINE, published as the Editor’s Choice for the Robert McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press and REMORSELESS LOYALTY, winner of the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, also from Ashland Poetry Press.  A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, Gelineau teaches in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University and has recently retired from Binghamton University, where she taught for 26 years and served as Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program and coordinator of the Readers’ Series. Visit her at christinegelineau.com.