Thank you to the 136 authors who participated in our HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series and THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series!

Thank you to the 136 authors from 21 countries and 32 U.S. states who contributed their poetry to our HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series and THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series, which ran from October 31, 2021 to March 23, 2022. Many thanks for sharing your ideas, thoughts, feelings, and impressions about the Earth and offering ways to address the climate crisis. As Greta Thunberg tells us, every contribution has an impact. Your work has inspired all of us to keep finding ways to make a difference!

Cynthia Anderson
María Luisa Arroyo
Jaya Avendel
Janet Banks
Sam Barbee
Jenny Bates
Laurel Benjamin
Shelly Blankman
Lavinia Blossom
Rose Mary Boehm
Erina Booker
Jeff Burt
Ranney Campbell
Robin Cantwell
Tricia Marcella Cimera
Clive Collins
Linda Jackson Collins
Judith Comer
Margaret Coombs
Joanne Corey
Joe Cottonwood
Barbara Crooker
Michele Cuomo
Michelle D’costa
Howard Debs
Steven Deutsch
Julie A. Dickson
Lara Dolphin
Anne Walsh Donnelly
Margaret Dornaus
Margaret Duda
Myra Dutton
Barbara Eknoian
Dina Elenbogen
Kimberly Esslinger
Attracta Fahy
Scott Ferry
Yvette Viets Flaten
Laura Foley
S.M. Geiger
Christine Gelineau
Ken Gierke
Jessica Gigot
Matthew Gilbert
Uma Gowrishankar
CR Green
Umar Saleh Gwani
Anita Haas
Tina Hacker
Sheila Hailstone
Penny Harter
Maura High
Sacha Hutchinson
Mathias Jansson
Andrew Jeter
Paul Jones
Euline Joseph
Feroza Jussawalla
Debra Kaufman
James Ross Kelly
Lynne Kemen
Kim Klugh
Tricia Knoll
Judy Kronenfeld
Laurie Kuntz
Tom Lagasse
Jennifer Lagier
Paula J. Lambert
Barbara Harris Leonhard
Joan Leotta
Anita Lerek
j.lewis
Robert Lima
Nancy Lubarsky
Anne Namatsi Lutomia
Marjorie Maddox
Mohini Malhotra
Betsy Mars
Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Elizabeth McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
Susan McClellan
Catfish McDaris
Joan McNerney
Ed Meek
Penelope Moffet
Leah Mueller
Andrew Mulvania
Mish Murphy
Jed Myers
Robbi Nester
Maria Nestorides
Cristina M.R. Norcross
Lynn Norton
Bonface Isaboke Nyamweya
Mary O’Brien
Suzanne O’Connell
Daniel Joseph Paracka, Jr.
Jay Passer
James Penha
Darrell Petska
Barbara Quick
Shirani Rajapakse
Patrick T. Reardon
Jeannie E. Roberts
Alexis Rotella
Ed Ruzicka
Rikki Santer
James Schwartz
Sheikha A.
Ndaba Sibanda
Sharon SingingMoon
Julia Klatt Singer
Ranjith Sivaraman
Julie Standig
Carol A. Stephen
Ann Christine Tabaka
Katrin Talbot
Alarie Tennille
Thomas A. Thrun
Smitha Vishwanath
Julene Waffle
Ann E. Wallace
Alan Walowitz
Donna Weems
Ruth Weinstein
A Garnett Weiss
Dick Westheimer
Kelley White
Lynn White
Kim Whysall-Hammond
Martin Willitts Jr
Liza Wolff-Francis
Jonathan Yungkans
Thomas Zampino
Joanie HF Zosike

PHOTO: The Blue Marble is an image of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon. NASA released the image on December 23, 1972, amid a surge in environmental activism, and the photograph became a symbol of the environmental movement—as a depiction of the Earth’s frailty and vulnerability. Credit: Johnson Space Center of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Listen to the Youth by Elizabeth McCarthy (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Listen to the Youth
by Elizabeth McCarthy

In Glasgow, Scotland
            the powerful discuss
recovery as the patient orbits the sun,
            its temperature rising
                        at every turn

as if Paris was enough to stop the burn

“empty promises — 30 years of blah, blah, blah”
                        will not cure what has been done

in time for children to live their lives
            on earth of green. Where freedom
                        ends in fires and floods, as futures
            wash away in the silty mud of greed.

Be the change you wish to see,
            each day the sun will rise and shine,
health is there in the light of day
            if we give up our fuel burning ways.

Silence the days of old, where gray haired
croakers prescribe greenwash on the windows of reality.

Listen to youth who march for truth.

*quotes are from Greta Thunberg, leader of the global movement to save our planet.

PHOTO: Greta Thunberg at the European Parliament on March 4, 2020.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I think one first has to recognize the diagnosis and prognosis for our planet before one can determine a treatment,  “How to Heal the Earth.” So, in this poem, I attempted to begin with where we are before addressing a prescription for health, which as suggested is in each of our hands as well as listening to those who speak the truth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth McCarthy lives with her husband in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont, where they raised two children, several generations of free roaming hens, and made numerous attempts at keeping honey bees alive through cold winters and marauding bears. In 2018, she retired from teaching and turned to poetry in March 2020 when Covid closed down the world and time became a windfall.

Not So Difficult Conversations by Anne Namatsi Lutomia (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Not So Difficult Conversations
by Anne Namatsi Lutomia

Today we ate Indian food for dinner
At an Indian restaurant in an American midwestern town
Once food of the Indian gods and kings
Recipes passed on with secrets only known to the select few
Full grains of rice and cottage cheese and spinach
Now a meal for a customer who is king

Before we left the chef came to greet
At first hurriedly but not for long
He spoke of his times in Germany after the Berlin Wall came down
My friend spoke of growing up in Berlin when the Wall was up
They both agreed to return to Berlin someday
He spoke of the seven seasons found in winter
Of the high temperatures and rainy monsoons
We all were remembered the news about Dehli’s air quality improvement      during COVID-19 shutdown
Of how the skies of once polluted cities turned azure blue, and the air      fresh
He spoke of the high temperatures and increased rainfall in India
I spoke of the change in seasons and increased floods and drought in      Kenya
We all remarked on the tree-planting efforts by Wangari Maathai
My friend shared about the midwestern snowstorms and changing      winters
As Midwesterners we all agreed that the winters were not the same
And agreed that climate change is real and requires quick action

T’was time to say goodbye so we happily left
Promised ourselves to return to our new friend’s restaurant soon
In our stories we healed ourselves
In our action we must heal mother earth
The next generation must tell better stories than we do
Stories of a healed world

IMAGE: Porcelain Dinner Plate with Flower Petal World Map by Beisiss. Available on Amazon.com.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was inspired by the call for submissions and a conversation with an Indian restauranteur in a small midwestern town. I wanted to demonstrate how climate change conversations can be a basis for storytelling followed by action.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Namatsi Lutomia is a budding poet and a member of Champaign-Urbana poetry group. She enjoys reading and writing poems, and has published poems with Silver Birch Press, BUWA, and awaazmagazine. She also likes going for long walks and now lives in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Earth Speaks: An Oratorio by Joanie HF Zosike (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Earth Speaks: An Oratorio
by Joanie HF Zosike

1. Recitativo—Earth

“Our last chance to tackle the climate catastrophe.”
Ugh.
“How to heal the earth.”
Argh.
“Our fight for the planet.”
Grrrr.
Expressions like these curdle my molten lava.
They make me want to smash my surface with a mallet!
Instead of wreaking havoc, I sing:

2. Chorus of Fig Trees and Farmers

She fell in love with her
landlord Sam, a generous man.
They were agrarian lovers
who worked on the land.

Fig tree gave the woman
a root and branch of itself.
She dropped seeds in the ground.
Her patch of earth grew to sky.

It grew fiercer, too.
how its green fig eye spread
greater than a mountain.
Woman held her head high.

Fig twitched its leaves and
shook-shaukelt-secoué
Shekere shekere IH! IH!
Ritual dance pounded Earth.

Well! Earth is in no mood
for bucolic solutions.
She doesn’t approve of naïve
resolutions. She needs more.

Earth seeks a new directive.
She’s maintaining her orbit
but must gain cooperation from
those who have injured her.

3. Duet: Earth and Human

EARTH: What makes you think you can save me?
HUMAN: I was born from the dust of your dust.
                I will prove that in me you can trust.
EARTH: What gives you this terrible power?
HUMAN: I’m your owner, your tamer, your plougher.
EARTH: You’ve never owned me and you never will.
HUMAN: What if I take you to dinner, pay the bill?
EARTH: All right, enough with the rhyming!
                We have to get down to the real nitty-gritty.
                You keep talking about a fight for “the planet.”
                Meaning me. Must it always be a fight?
HUMAN: That’s right, I can’t abandon you after I’ve done you such harm.
                And I swear, I did so out of innocence.
                I never meant to hurt you.
                I just didn’t know.
EARTH: So you’re saying you were ignorant?
HUMAN: Just like Eve fell prey to the snake’s manipulation,
                I fell under the spell of my own self-adulation.
EARTH: There you go, rhyming again. The editor specifically said…
HUMAN: Sorry, I have to reread the guidelines.
                What I mean to say is, I owe you a good old-fashioned healing.
EARTH: Get your grimy hands off me, infant.
                You think the only way to accomplish anything is by force.
                I’ve lost patience with your battle cries and wars!
HUMAN: Don’t go all semantic on me, Ma.
EARTH: It’s not just wrong words, you think wrong thoughts.
                Perhaps you should ask ME what I need.
HUMAN: Okay, what do you need?

4. Earth Aria

EARTH: Sprinkle me gently.
                Don’t grizzle my grit so that soil drains down the hillsides
                You are so sloppy, child, throwing your trash this way and that.
                You’ve burned away the ozone so you can’t go out without a                 hat.
                You’ve charred the forests and mountainsides, disgraced every                 place
                you’ve trod across the land in your mania to leave your mark.
                You’ve suckled the blood from my rivers, my streams.
                Cast your plastics, spit my oil into the ocean’s crust
                Put a flag on the moon! Good grief!
                I ask you now to press your face into mine.
                Sing to me ancient songs. Place your ear to the ground,
                hear the whispers from the bedchambers of my bowels.
                I’m built like a brick house, organic and mineral.
                Trees are my bones, don’t break them.
                We’re made of the same stuff—I’m just a little more round.

5. Glorious Hallelujah!

HUMAN: And bigger.
EARTH:  And don’t you forget it!
HUMAN: Are you saying I’m star stuff, too?
EARTH:  More than you know.
HUMAN: Is my human body—
EARTH: The same as my celestial body.
HUMAN: I’ve always dreamt that I could talk with you, Mother Earth.
EARTH: I’ve dreamed about that too, honey.
                Yearned for the chance to make myself clear to you.
                Too bad I had to shout to get your attention.
HUMAN: You are kind of scary these days.
EARTH: I’ve always been scary. But I’m always benign.
HUMAN: Can I learn to think like a celestial body?
EARTH: Perhaps. If you really try.
HUMAN: I must fly away to distance stars to save the human race!
EARTH: What, to terraform and make the same mistakes all over again?
                You’re just not a one-trial learner, are you?
HUMAN: I guess not. But how do I learn to fix—tackle—heal—fight—
                I’m confused.
EARTH: No kidding.
                Follow your instincts, child, that’s all.
                Learn from the seasons and tides.
                They are my children, too. They’ll be looking out for you.
                There’s no need for apprehension.
                Did I forget to mention, we can stage an intervention together.
BOTH:    Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
CHORUS: Glorious, glorious HEAVE-HO!
EARTH:  I don’t want you to leave so try not to heave
                and I urge you to think when you hoe!
TUTTI: Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
             Arboreous glorious Hallelujah!
             Victorious synergy, Hallelujah!
             Green is the color of love!

PAINTING: Spring by Harmonia Rosales (2018).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The first thing I thought about when I saw the subject for this Silver Birch series was:

“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and
Tied her with fences and dragged her down.”
—The Doors, “When the Music’s Over”

I thought back to my solo theatre work written in the early 90s, All Right, So I AM the Earth! and realized this theme has been with me a long time. Then I remembered that with others of my generation, I screamed as if wounded about an imminent catastrophe since the late 60s. Flash forward to 2022. The catastrophe is here. The repercussions of war and injury done to the ecosystem are intrinsically related. It will take imagination, vision, resistance, and strategies we have yet to imagine to overcome what our careless treatment of life on earth and in the oceans has wrought. We are all responsible to a degree, so the best thing we as individuals can do is: educate ourselves, reduce our carbon footprint, and don’t forget how to dance, sing, and love. And, if all else fails, write an oratorio.

PHOTO: Joanie Fritz Zosike in All Right, So I AM the Earth!, solo theatre work written, composed, and performed by JHFZ, directed by Stephanie JT Russell, photo by Jeanne Liotta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanie HF Zosike is the 2019 Writer’s Hotel Sara Patton poetry stipend recipient. Her upcoming work includes Jambu Press’s Light on the Walls of Life, an anthology dedicated to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Her chapbooks are Character Poems (Chez Chez) and Bliss, Not Weight, (Ides Anthology of Chapbooks, Silver Birch Press). Her poetry has been featured in a ranged of publications, including Alien Buddha, Home Planet News, Levure Literraire, Maintenant, Syndic, and The New Guard: Boom!  “Compassion,” a short story, appeared in Have a NYC 3 (Three Rooms Press). Joanie received an Albee fellowship for her play Inside produced at American Actors Theatre, a NYSCA regrant for 12 Steps to Murder produced at The New Theater, and Foundation for Jewish Culture grant for And Then the Heavens Closed, produced at The Jewish Museum (all in NYC).

Catacombs by Umar Saleh Gwani (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Catacombs
by Umar Saleh Gwani

We hunted and gathered
domesticating with ease,
we conquered

We tied leashes, halters,
often some fine ornaments
at altars built in celebrating
our might

Intelligent life sounds more
like advancement in running
like software to nowhere,
while mother sleeps

What if she’s nursing fatigue,
wounds from tons of emissions,
ego defined, war here,
battle there?

Let the earth heal and humans
learn to coexist and clean up,
so mother’s torn ligaments
can grow back strong.

PAINTING: Red Sun by Arthur Dove (1935).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem attempts to highlight Man’s abilities to conquer his terrain and overpower other creatures but how humans have been neglectful about sustaining the environment by cutting down, emissions, and other harmful practices leading to climate change. We are orphans once this earth dies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Umar Saleh Gwani is an Information & Communications Technology consultant based in Bauchi, Nigeria. His hobbies include poetry, digital photography, and outdoor sports. He is the author of Thunderclap (ISBN: 978-978-56200-4-7), a poetry collection published by AMAB Books Nigeria, and his poems have been featured by online publishers such as Konya Shams Rumi and Praxis online Magazine.  He is married with children.

Elegy for My Trees by Feroza Jussawalla (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Elegy for My Trees
by Feroza Jussawalla

The weather is turning;
not, as it usually does,
when liquid gold
comes and goes,
dripping from amber branches
that shed their emerald ear drops.

This year there is no crunch
to the gold dried to airy thinness.
It is soggy damp. Slippery and sliding,
causing falls.

The skies have been weeping,
Filling the ever-overflowing rain barrels.

The continuous damp chill,
has wilted my Afghan pines
traumatized by the drought
in and around me, unready for this
bounty of water.

Many years of dry drought
have not prepared, desert sand or bark,
to absorb
what should be a gift of rain.

Instead, damp bark leeches water
releasing pine beetles, for
busy woodpecker heads to
peck, peck, peck,
tap, tap, tap.

It is a wonder their little heads don’t
fall off,
similarly making them fodder
for the lone hawk that sits
on his dying throne
a throne that I must soon have felled
before it tumbles and crumbles.

No, this water has not been a blessing,
as it breaks the banks of rivers
used to dry edges:
“This is how we were meant to be,” they say,
“to be streams in a desert,
For, when we are full and flush,
greedy gold diggers, mistaken mine cleaners,
break veins, that loose
poison into our life blood.”

Petrichor turns to putrifaction,
as drowning roots, lose loose soil
threatening to topple
stately majestics that must be felled
before canyon winds blow them over.

No, we have abused mother earth too long,
and now she lets loose wind and weather,
tides that bring in the amakua, as sharks
that bite children by the seaside.
This niño does not bring a blessing,

Santo Niño, can you save us with your rebirth?

PHOTO: New Mexico storm (Sept. 30, 2017). Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is an elegy for MY eight big Afghan pines that had to be felled, a couple years ago, in 2015, when our desert environment received and excess of rain. In 2015, the gold King mine waste water spilled into our rivers, in the one year that we had an excess of rain and the rivers were full. Thus, the water could not be used.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Feroza Jussawalla, is Professor Emerita, of English, at the University of New Mexico, Albuqueruque. She has taught for forty plus years and published several works of criticism on Postcolonial Literatures. Her collection of poetry, Chiffon Saris, was published by Toronto South Asian Review Press and The Writer’s Workshop, Kolkotta (2002).

Sea Change by Robin Cantwell (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Sea Change
by Robin Cantwell

I turn off my phone,
tune out the news,
adjust my eyes
to three dimensions
to memory
to the shapes and sounds of life
a life beyond a touchscreen’s glare
a life that no longer needs data
data that breeds anxiety
anxiety that leads to response
response measured
in artificial urgency
in the mania
of all those feeds
feeds that tell me
get on that plane
refresh that page
toss that straw
into the sea
consume
consume
consume.

If I can make my difference
in habit alone
perhaps I can create a state of mind
that lasts a lifetime
a state of mind that takes me
outside the danger zone
the danger zone that whispers
who cares about icebergs
when they’re so far out of sight
so what if you take an uber
when you’re only a bike ride away.

Before I turn my phone back on
before I plug back in
let me take this feeling
unspool it
like an ancient tapestry
and in that tapestry find
a tectonic shift
a new chapter

a sea change.

PHOTO: Arrangement in Blue and Silver: The Great Sea by James McNeill Whistler (1885).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem during a power cut. Picking up a pen and writing in a notebook, away from the keyboard and screen, was a moment of revelation. It made me think: if we can remove ourselves, if only momentarily, from the updates and feeds that create such urgency within us, then perhaps our anxiety to consume will gradually go with it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robin Cantwell is a London-based graduate of the National Theatre and Theatre503 playwriting programmes. A lover of monologues, his writing for the stage has been showcased at the likes of Southwark Playhouse, Green Curtain Theatre and Anthroplay Theatre. Themes range from James Joyce’s writer’s block to the fear of your friends getting blue ticks on Instagram. His comic poetry has appeared in several UK and US anthologies, while he’s also a regular short fiction contributor to Pure Slush in Australia. He’s currently on the Faber & Faber Writing Academy, where he is writing his first novel.

Extreme Weather by Dina Elenbogen (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Extreme Weather
by Dina Elenbogen

The border says stop to the wind but the wind speaks another
language and keeps going
                                             Alberto Rios

They removed the fence that separates waves
from people walking There’s nothing between us

and water turning like oceans of larger coasts
The day we didn’t dig my uncle’s grave

a Derecho swept the shores
of Lake Michigan uprooted

ancient Maples American Ash
We ran against the darkening sky

sheltered indoors and watched
from a safe distance

His ashes danced
the rhythms of distant waters

They call it erosion when waves take
more than they give back

swallow the sand beneath our feet
If you walk away

from the lake towards the shadows
of hundred-year-old homes

you’ll see ladders still leaning
towards the roofs that failed

when hail bombarded us in April
the night before the holiday of plagues

We tried to collect ourselves and the shards
that landed in our gardens

Hands still raw from March winds
we planted against tyranny

and later gathered zucchini
tomatoes and basil

There were seeds that promised
to sprout but lay dormant

We watered throughout July’s drought
nodded at neighbors through cloth

masks and gloved knuckles
We kept turning the earth planting milkweed

next to dreams
of an ordinary life

It’s autumn and time
to remove the tangled roots

of what no longer bears fears
I had meant to write fruit What

no longer bears
fruit but fear accompanies

every gesture
I am writing to tell you that skies change suddenly

roots that seem deep can be lifted
by November wind

Listen closely nearby is the water
we call life

Previously published in December magazine (Fall/Winter 2021).

PHOTO: Lake Michigan waves by Jill Wellington.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dina Elenbogen, a widely published and award-winning poet and prose writer, is author of the memoir Drawn from Water (BKMk Press, University of Missouri) and the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY). Her work has appeared in anthologies, including Fury: Women’s Lived Experience During the Trump Era (Regal Books, 2020) City of the Big Shoulders (University of Iowa Press), Beyond Lament (Northwestern University Press), Where We Find Ourselves (SUNYPress), Rust Belt Chicago Anthology, and magazines and journals, including Lit Hub, December magazine, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Bellevue Literary Review, Woven Tale Press, Tiferet, Tikkun, Paterson Literary Review, Connecticut River Review, New City Chicago, and the Chicago Reader. The recipient of fellowships in poetry and prose from the Illinois Arts Council and the Ragdale Foundation, she has a poetry MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago Graham School, where she received the Excellence in Teaching Award. Dina also consults individually with writers on creative projects. Visit her at dinaelenbogen.com.

Wash Me in Intention by Jaya Avendel (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Wash Me in Intention
by Jaya Avendel

Mosaiced at the banks with
Pink, blue, and yellow plastics
Water chokes between the drowning
Colors, cuts into the earth and
Sinks ice into skin.

Ask for paper
If the cloth on your flesh
Cannot warp into a bag.

Ask for paper
If your golden locks cannot
Braid into a basket.

Press glass to your cheek
Scatter rocks dipped in sugar syrup
For the bees; preserve in honey and wax
Dreams and moments of sweet intention.

PAINTING: Beautiful rhythm in the lotus pond by Dayou Lu (2019).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My sisters visited the James River a few months ago and told me the water was thick, muddy-yellow, clogged with plastic bags and trash. Plastic waste is one of the biggest threats to marine life. Plastics also impede our ability to maintain a healthy, clean water supply on earth due to short life, increased use, and poor waste disposal. It is not much but asking for paper bags at the shops and using reusable shopping bags is one of the many small things my family and I are able to do to help reduce plastic waste in the want of a cleaner future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jaya Avendel is a micro poetess and word witch from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, passionate about life where it intersects with writing and the dreamscapes lost in between. With writing published at Green Ink Poetry, Lamplit Underground, Feral Magazine, and The Anthropocene Hymnal Anthology, she writes at ninchronicles.com and tweets as @AvendelJaya.

News by Barbara Eknoian (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

News
by Barbara Eknoian

The polar bears
are drowning
off the coast of Alaska
swimming eighty miles
to find seals.
It’s the Big Melt,
the CNN announcer says,
and walrus pups swim
without their mother,
they can’t keep up
with her search for food.
The camera pans in
on lean polar bears
desperately eating
birds and berries
on their way
to extinction.
The polar bears
are drowning
off the coast of Alaska.

PAINTING: Thin ice by Oleksandr Hnylyzkyj (2008).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was originally published in 2006 by New Verse News. Sadly, the climate situation with the Big Melt has worsened. With the world now calling attention to the severity of our climate problems, hopefully, it can improve. As Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist says, “When enough people come together, then change will come, and we can achieve almost anything.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Eknoian is a grandmother of five, and is praying for solutions to our climate change. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Pearl, Red Shift, Your Daily Poem, and New Verse News. Her poetry book, Why I Miss New Jersey, and her latest novel, Hearts on Bergenline Avenue, are available at Amazon. Her poetry chapbook, Life Is But a Dream, was published by Arroyo Seco Press.