A Poem by Eric Magrane

"Nature vs. Culture" (detail), installation by Stephanie Powell. Warringah, NSW.

 “we need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest ally”
                                            — Inger Andersen

in my cultural geography class,
i send students outside to make two lists

everything that is natural
and everything that is not

flower buds, bugs, trees, people,
mountains, clouds, soil,
they write on the natural side
of the board when they are inside

cell phones, buildings, cars
they write on the other

people are natural, they say (mostly)
while things made by people are not


                                     that there is an outside?
                                     that there is an inside?


discomfort with the battle metaphor:
                                                                                              to take up, with open
                                                                                                                                                                  arms


             what is human nature
    
             to be an ally of that which we are


what we know--
Yet have no art to say
            wrote Dickinson

                               So impotent Our Wisdom

the pandemic rages on and the skies are clear over some city

you have left the trail
                 please follow the signs


                                                          laid bare structural inequalities

                                                          food, water, shelter, air
              

(maybe) things can change
                                                                        on a dime


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eric Magrane is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at New Mexico State University. He is editor, with Linda Russo, Sarah de Leeuw, and Craig Santos Perez, of Geopoetics in Practice (Routledge 2020). You can find more of his recent work on climate change and poetry in Carbon Copy, Literary Geographies, Dialogues in Human Geography, The End of the World Project, or Big Energy Poets: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change (BlazeVOX books).