by Kim Baker
Wait for me, while I go preach to my sisters, the birds.
St. Francis of Assisi, Patron Saint of Nature
St. Francis of the Ozone, that can’t-be-too-hasty prophet,
foretells that sales of kayaks and sun hats will swell
while dogs will grow fins and gills
and the Provincetown Monument will run with the humpbacks.
Humans poo poo his imprecise premonition
snatched from the approaching loss of seasons and beaches,
from the prescience of polar bears and penguins
buying flood insurance and sump pumps,
from trout uninvesting in rain and glaciers and lakes
overflowing into malls and basements,
from the murmur of birds heard feathering nests in synthetic
and relinquishing trees to the more evolved specimens
who angrily wet-vac an inconvenient truth from their cellars
never noticing Lightening dismissing its never-strike-twice myth.
When she isn’t teaching the abundant virtues of the comma, writing about big hair and Elvis, and doing the Cha Cha, Kim Baker works to end violence against women. Kim performs in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence. Her poems have been published online and in print. Her most recent reasons to cha cha cha include fourth place in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Poetry.
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