A poem I wrote after feeling down about climate change and the near-constant figuration of the earth as a desperate, damaged mother who is unable to ‘nourish’ (resource) humans. In this gender script, what — exactly — needs salvation?

For once, I want The Earth to be a man

ruddy, wet, adorned in dark clouds, in bright clouds, in thin wisps of clouds

frivolously decorated with blossoms

and pocked with that black silt that jiggles like jello

as it settles

as water gurgles upwards

all the moxies in Earth’s flows

rivers, trade winds, gusts,

tides, twisters, drips,

eddies, drafts, runoff, doldrums,

transpiration, evaporation, sublimation

the month when sap swells and runs

and the months when sap becomes sludge

or when it becomes crystals

old and articulated

I don’t want Earth’s meat chiseled

I want etches and scratches of time

of times

of real times on the skin

of real times caressing canyons

of real times probing the slits, submerging in marshes, playing in between the twigs

until or as, or maybe whenever land forms

Entire cave systems of cold dank air

patience —— as trees network their roots to speak foreign languages

allowance —— as soils rot and ripen

wait there as birds search for feathers and leaves inhale

while time springs and falls

and the earth needs saving

Image Credit:

Alicja Brodowicz, Visual Exercises: A Series of Diptychs (2018)