Patricia Asuncion’s most recent poem to appear here was “Changed Climate” (August 2017)
Acid brew
By Patricia Asuncion
The violence that exists in the human heart is also manifest in the symptoms of illness
that we see in the Earth, the water, the air and in living things.—Pope Francis
of discontent will rise
from her scarred belly, long
the brunt of human parasites. Bile
will seep through her earthy pores, nothing
recognizable will remain but crusty derma—
no Redwoods, no Amazon ants
no Giant Hare ferns, no Goblin sharks,
no Sandhill Cranes, no Hula painted frogs
who’d survived her moods
millions of years.
Expressed in glacier melts and trillion-ton breaks,
in weather fits—five thousand
storms, floods, monster winds
in four US months—
her seething waters will accelerate
to full boil, then evaporate
like California’s drought, the worst
in 1200 years—
without water mark regrets,
into deep space
as radiant energy, solar
and space drag retaliation
for America’s insatiable gluttony each year—
two billion tons of burning fossil fuels,
83 million tons of unrecyclable trash,
and 40 percent pollution of all waters.
Wow, scary stuff, indeed.