The air: humid with change, and the clouds
Behind the moon pulse once with light.
Is it a plane signalling departure?
But then they pulse again.
I’m caught in the confusion of this century—
The meshing of technology and weather,
Every flash a sign
Of an anonymous apocalypse.
A plane does come,
Out sighing the grumbling thunder.
And I wonder if the oil from this engine
Sprayed out across this sky
Sparked this storm tonight?
I know, I know, the reaction’s not so instant.
Change is a pattern, not a moment.
But ever since the studies found
That warming nurtures hurricanes,
“The thunder of a jet engine”
Stopped being a metaphor.
And so I stand watching the storm clouds spread
Over the tiny island
That started this conflagration
When it first “raised water by fire”
To free profit from geography.
Today, when it was still sunny
I saw a child’s note tacked to a tree:
“Do you want our world to die!”
Exclamation point, not question mark,
As if they knew the answer
But must still demand what they already knew
The grownup world would not give.
The clouds have hid the moon that glowed so brightly
Just two flashes before.
I should go inside
Before it rains
But I am too afraid
Not of my own death,
But of the death of hope.
I think of my generation
And the one after,
Stumbling towards no future
Groggy with too much past
With nowhere to look but up.
Image credit Sutton Nicholls
(Un)Nature Poems 