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Thursday, December 15, 2016

THE LAST BRIGHT MOTES

by Devon Balwit




President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real and that he is “studying” whether the United States should withdraw from the global warming agreement struck in Paris a year ago. —Washington Post, December 11, 2016


The feather star unfolds itself forward, frond
            after frond, like an Escher stairway,

impossible, yet in perpetual motion, somewhere deep
            off the coast of Thailand, unaware

that protection of its ocean has been handed
            to the oil-hungry, who will crack

the sea floor until it oozes black, until such creatures
            dance only as bright motes in memory,

those who love them too weak to halt the juggernauts
            of greed and indifference.


Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. She has a chapbook Forms Most Marvelous forthcoming from dancing girl press (summer 2017). Her recent poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News before as well as in numerous print/on-line journals, among them: Oyez, Red Paint Hill, The Ekphrastic Review, The Cincinnati Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Timberline Review, Trailhead Magazine VCFA, The Prick of the Spindle, and Permafrost.