WILDFIRE SMOKE AND A WALK IN THE WOODS

by Katy Z. Allen

“What the Newest Research on Wildfire Smoke Tells Us.” —The New York Times, August 16, 2026 

people are exposed to more toxins…damaging lungs…brains…other organs

entering the woods wondering about teshuvah–return, repair, restart,

welcomed by a tufted titmouse repeating peter-peter-peter

and two great blue herons with 6-foot wing spans taking flight

 

PM2.5…measured by air quality indexes…other substances…lead, mercury, formaldehyde

walking steadily, trees newly fallen join so many already decaying

quickly replaced by new growth vying for space

away from the road, the woods quiet save for a steady hum of crickets,

the call of a nuthatch, the squeal of a catbird, the hammering of a woodpecker

sounds of machinery in the distance

in populated areas…especially toxic…fires…consume…buildings, vehicles, electronics

suddenly a patch of blackberries, but I walk on, for I didn’t come to the woods to pick,

but irrepressible desire overcomes, I turn around and pick enough for my granola,

until the loss of my lid’s container and my memory of what I did with it

pierce my delight and set me to questioning and despairing of myself

wildfire smoke and …cardiovascular hospitalizations, diabetes complications, preterm birth, cancer, impaired cognition, respiratory effects

the steady rhythm of my walking restores my wellbeing

as I think of ancient sages meditating an hour before prayer,

focusing so intently, even a snake crawling up their leg would go unnoticed,

and far that I am from that degree of connection, still I stop for prayer, 

accompanied by the chirping of a chipmunk and the chattering of distant birds

no amount of smoke exposure …isn’t harmful…using masks and air filters more frequently

rising from prayer ready to complete my walk and enter the day, 

I carry with me new understanding of the potential pitfalls 

of physical desire and action taken too soon,

as I continue to contemplate teshuvah in the face of global crisis

best way to mitigate risks…to prevent catastrophic fires…addressing the root cause:…climate change

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, and co-founder of a Jewish climate organization. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in print and online in such places as The New Verse News, Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, Cosmic Daffodil, The Soliloquist Journal and Art on the Trails: Number 9. She was awarded Honorable Mention in The Prose Poem’s 2025 Prose Poetry Competition, and her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing. 

RESTING ON A ROCK AT 8000 FEET WHEN IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO HOT IN MARCH

an abecedarian

by Malinda Miller

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west [in March] would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis... caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. —The Guardian, March 20, 2026

Above the steep riverbank, no snow or ice in sight,

 

below a craggy granite face, I’m

 

cracked open by 

 

determination to understand 

 

evolution. Not 

 

from where, how, why —

 

grand theories

 

honed in academic halls, no — more

 

incipient answers to questions I’m afraid to ask.

 

Junipers surround me, trunks gnarled, twisted,

 

knobby—able to survive relentless heat, intense winds, scarcity of water. 

 

Lichen, among the oldest of living things on Earth, 

 

mossy green, burnt orange and yellow on barren rock 

 

near my dusty backpack and boots, colonized here long before us. 

 

Other foliage and organisms are not so hardy—nor am I—left 

 

parched from a winter of too much wind and too little moisture;

 

questioning, can damage causing climate change be

 

reversed? What’s next? Can we adapt?

 

Should we expect a 

 

tumultuous future full of

 

unforeseen consequences?

 

Verdant seasons may become rare. This we must accept.

 

We’re not as resilient as juniper or lichen. With limited water, only 

 

xeric organisms will survive. Of this planet’s 4.5 billion years, in

 

yardsticks of time, humans are a blip. If, when, will we become 

 

zero, zip, zilch?

 

Malinda Miller is a writer, teacher and editor who is most at home on Weston Pass in Colorado or in the Nevada desert where her family had a ranch just off Highway 50, aka the Loneliest Highway in America. Her poetry and personal essays have appeared in A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park, Ecotone, Think, the Mountain Gazette, the Colorado Sun, the Coloradan, and others. At Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, she teaches youth classes and community outreach workshops. She has a MFA in creative writing from Western State Colorado University and a MA in journalism from CU Boulder.

CAMP MYSTIC

by Karen Marker

Art by Nick Anderson

With no advance warning 

the San Antonio National Weather Service

had already been reduced to rubble

missing meteorologist, hydrologist, 

staff forecaster.

 

Frantic parents pray for their children 

caught off guard by the flooding

Guadalupe. No more have been found alive

clinging to trees.  

 

The governor signs a declaration. 

The search and rescue in Central Texas

will continue looking.

 

In this state while water spills over 

the banks of rivers in another 

water’s gone missing. The Great 

Salt Lake is starved to death. 

 

Protestors speak like sybils, prophets, seers.

And still the senators, the governor claim 

climate change a hoax.They can’t see 

through their frozen hearts the melting ice,

can’t smell the noxious gases, admit what 

this means for our survival.

 

It costs them nothing to offer their prayers

 

We all feel haunted like Hamlet did 

in Elsinore.  Perfumes can’t cover over 

the smell of what’s rotten—a shriveled lake

with its dead fish, a bloated river where children 

float downstream like Ophelia.

 

 

Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist who has committed to writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response  to current events. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press and explores family mental illness, stigma and healing. 

LIVES SWEPT AWAY

by Philip Kitcher

Art by Nick Anderson

“A flood”, he says, “once in a hundred years”:
            unwilling to concede
            our planet’s urgent need,
he shows no true engagement with their tears.
 
Disdaining loss of human life, he stokes
            the storms, the fires that burn.
            This willful child won’t learn
the truth: that climate change is not “a hoax”.
 
Because of his refusal to believe,
how many future families will grieve?

Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years. His new book The Rich and the Poor (Polity Press) is all about the costs of abandoning morality in politics and public life. His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

CECCO’S ECHOES

S’ i’ fosse foco, arderei ’l mondo—Sonnet 86 

by Cecco Angiolieri (Siena, c.1260–c.1312)

translated by Julie Steiner

Source: IranCartoon

Trump Tries to Make Sure States Don’t Fight Climate Change, Either: The Trump administration wants to block states from trying to limit the “astounding” costs and impacts of climate change. “This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. —Rolling Stone, May 24, 2025

If I were fire, I’d scorch the world all over.
If I were wind, I’d blast its storm-wracked ground.
If I were water, I’d make sure it drowned.
If I were God, I’d give it Hell forever.

If I were Pope, I’d gleefully endeavor
to prank all Christians, just to mess around.
If I were Emperor—what then? You’ve found
the answer: I’d behead all sorts, whoever.

If I were death, I’d give my dad a visit.
If I were life, I’d turn from him and scram.
And how I’d treat my mom’s no different, is it?

If I were Cecco—as I’ve been, and am—
I’d take the younger women, the exquisite,
and leave for other men each vile old ma’am.

Italian Original:

S’ i’ fosse foco, ardere’ il mondo ;
s’ i’ fosse vento, lo tempesterei ;
s’ i’ fosse acqua, io l’ anegherei ;
s’ i’ fosse dio, mandereil en profondo ;

s’ i’ fosse papa, sare’ alor giocondo,
chè tutt’ i cristïani imbrigherei ;
s’ i’ fosse ’mperator, sa’ che farei ?
a tutti mozarei lo capo a tondo.

S’ i’ fosse morte, andarei da mio padre ;
s’ i’ fosse vita, fugirei da lui ;
similmente faría di mi’ madre.

S’ i’ fosse Cecco com’ i’ sono e fui,
torrei le donne giovani e legiadre :
e vecchie e laide lasserei altrui.

Francesco ("Cecco") Angiolieri corresponded with Dante Alighieri, and addressed one of his 120 extant sonnets to him. Most of his work is humorous.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Her most recent verse translations from Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian can be found in (or are forthcoming from) Literary Matters, The Classical Outlook, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

WHAT DOESN’T VANISH IF DENIED

by Devon Balwit

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Department of Commerce announces the end of $4 million in funding of climate risk projects at Princeton. —Daily Princetonian, April 9, 2025

The prevailing wisdom used to be to hide 

the ailment from the ailing and, in so euphemizing,

ease their dying, like a fringe of trees beside

the road used to mask clear-cutting.

 

But the patient, intimate with tumors and waning powers, 

knew, and felt the greater pain for all 

the smiling, for all the cheery cards and flowers,

and wondered at the falsehood, and was appalled.

 

And we, too, as we hear our current leaders

asking scholars to deny how far gone

we are so we mightn’t worry—as if our rivers

weren’t in flood or our homes burned to the lawns.

 

As if insisting there’s no such thing as gravity,

makes the times we’re living in less heavy.

Devon Balwit edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.

FIRE

by Gil Hoy

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

The hawk

Soars high

in the sky. Humans
Soar higher,
Faster, 
Farther. 

The fish
Swims majestically 
Through the currents 
of the sea. Humans
Swim faster,
Deeper,
Farther. 

Bats,
Whales, 
Dolphins,
Rabbits,
Don’t destroy

the planet.
 
It’s getting hotter outside.

The fires rage and

There’s not enough water. 

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who studied fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and at Boston University. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer and a former four-term elected Brookline, MA Selectman. His poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Third Wednesday, Flash Fiction Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, The Galway Review, Right Hand Pointing, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review,  Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News and elsewhere.

THE WEATHERMAN CRIED

by Stella Graham-Landau

how many years has he 

shared warned cajoled explained

the likelihoods percentages and possibilities

where storms could land

still they argue

point to past failures and misses

their anecdotes and myths raised to the status of fact

he looks at his maps

the tiny mass of whirling white

swirling counterclockwise

this one is a monster

he apologizes for his tears

he is still in the throes of trauma

knowing how many folks died two weeks ago

when dire pleadings went unheeded

maybe he realizes that

his friends who will not leave their cats 

may not survive this storm

he wipes his eyes

he has no life preservers to toss

no life jackets to dispense

no paddleboards or inflatable rafts to offer

he only has science

and statistics

and words he hopes will save lives

he takes off his glasses

holds his head in his hands

i hope i’m wrong this time

Stella Graham-Landau has lived in hurricane territory most of her life. She has great respect for the power of these named storms and much gratitude for the meteorologists who share their insights in an effort to keep us safe.