it don’t snow much round here no more,
but it snowed on new year’s day, a sign of what we called seasons the workshop lady said feelings lead to longings lead to action . . . i long for healthy forests, oceans, sound leadership, community, seasons . . . what to do? the seasons i have no control over -- or the past, actually. like 2020. the envelope, please . . . well, actually . . . the envelope isn’t available til jan. 16, when we’ll know if it’s the hottest year on record, or only tied meanwhile, here’s what we know about 2020: hottest temperature ever measured on planet earth (130 f, death valley, 8/16) hottest summer ever in n. hemisphere hottest jan. on record hottest sept. on record tie for hottest may on record hottest earth in 50m years (hard to imagine w/snow on th’ground -- what would donald say?) no snow in helsinki (1st recorded instance) and 4.17” rain in tucson (least ever) worst wildfires in australia’s records, 46,000,000 acres incinerated; worst in america’s, too, 10,250,000 acres scorched, including 5 of 6 worse wildfires in california ever, where 4.1 m acres burned, thick smoke smeared skies for hundreds of miles, carbonized forests; record wildfires in siberia, 247,000 acres sacrificed to flames, while record arctic heat, too (100.4 f); massive out-of-control fires in s. america, incl. pantanal wetlands, 28% consumed what is your longing, right about now? worst atlantic storm season, 30 named, 6 major hurricanes; honduras, nicaragua, guatemala “ravaged” with “staggering damage,” submerged or ruined by back-to-back cyclones (& lake charles, louisiana, too); costliest “thunderstorm” in u.s. history: $7.5b derecho (“inland hurricane”) scoured iowa meanwhile we had other things to worry about like covid, like elections, like economy, brownshirts, etc. meanwhile the “indian ocean dipole” meant: e. africa, s. & w. asia, australia pummeled by relentless inundations (too many to recap here — just scan the spring and summer staves of this here chronicle for all the local disasters & record thisses and thats): ⅓ bangladesh underwater + much of india + philipines = 6m humans displaced; 1m humans displaced in s. sudan; plus vietnam, indonesia, multiple times: monsoons went on and on; followed by plagues of locusts (ongoing), eating all the people food in east africa, much of mideast & india & o yeah strongest tropical cyclone ever to make landfall (in philipines: goni, 195 mph winds); 190 mph winds w/cyclone amphan, worst ever to hit bay of bengal; worst ever to hit horn of africa (gati) (the seawater gets hotter and hotter, which lends itself to this sort of thing) while floods in china cost $32b with a “b” — cities inundated all up and down the yangtze much deluge there, but little rain in zimbabwe, madagascar, w. cape, s. cone, dry corridor of c. america: busted farms, hungry kids, parents ready for drastic change lowest arctic sea ice ever in july, october; zombie storms in pacific; greening arctic w/methane blow-holes; massive trans-atlantic dust cloud . . . co2 emissions went down and down; co2 concentrations continued up up up the point of all of which is this is really happening, weren’t not in the future; the point is it ain’t no hoax & ain’t no joke; the point is you had to find out about all this from a poem; the point is it isn’t stopping for 2021; the point is somebody’s got to say it. the point is you & you will do what you do.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |