041019

Springtime in Antarctica

The settlement has moved again,
last generation’s prefabs
are home to giant crab,
mussel, and whelk;
grass flows across
exhumed hills at the speed of thaw.

Deer, elk, and fox,
refugees from world-girdling flame;
but for the coronaviruses
all would be extinct.
We, the 1% of the 1%,
we let them be,
our bones, our vitals feel the pangs
of skin-of-our-teeth survival.

Your parents dead, mine too,
gone our children, everyone we knew,
little enough of humanity
has made it here,
and the heat keeps rising,
ice no more than rumor,
mirage, legend, dream.

Before it happened,
I saw a TED talk about the cusp:
once you fall off the cliff
there’s nowhere to go but down,
Earth bakes for millions of years.
or goes the way of Venus.

We may not be there yet,
I saw a dolphin last week,
it leaped high over the bay,
again, again, again,
for joy of being,
and the cone flowers are abloom.

We’ll have fabulous sunsets
, at least till everything north of
Tierra del Fuego burns away,
for now, I’ve brewed some wine,
packed sandwiches in a hamper,
you’re breathing well again at last,
and birds are singing--
is it a date?