Earth Gives

Loosened icy girdles spill shivering blue water.
Tired reefs bathe in soda pop oceans, resistance dissolved.
Tropical peat smokes languidly, drying throats, wetting eyes.
Earth’s dowry diminishes—smell her cheap demise.
Cloaked in grey haze, our asphalt gardens spring noxious blooms.
In heated islands we forge sooty girders and city bones,
And steadily erupt wafting translucent cross-country plumes
until carboniferous residue assaults her remotest zones.
Science revels her ravishing in temperature terra incognita,
Unrestrained by elliptical cycles, addled by her lunar curves.
Adaptation, Mitigation, Sequestration, and Emissions seductions!
We warmly lay among her last ice sheets knowing she’s given up.
St. Martin d’Uriage, France
February 25, 2008