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.

COP 30 CLOSING DAY LIMERICK

by Paul A. Freeman

With half the world living on gruel,

we’re treating the planet most cruel.

The ice sheets are thawing,

and CO₂’s soaring,

yet still we won't dump fossil fuel.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

PYROCENE THIS TIME

by Corey Weinstein

 

Nowhere winds bluster cloudless skies

blistering skins of rattle-windowed homes,

The parched air bites through wilted gardens,

Dry lightning judges the boiling world,

Heaven’s fiery tongues crackle the air

that booms the world without drenching grace,

Bestowing 8,000 square mile conflagrations,

Gaia’s retribution for dragging incendiaries

up from her breast with mine and pump,

Ripping off mountain tops, greasing her fissures,

Terra not Firma shakes our foundations.

 

Who is this people, these fire starters

that bespoil their nest and neighbor’s land?

In bands they were heroes of ice time survival

in pleasant harmony with their birthing world,

Now their fires are hidden in machines,

Personal aluminum hundred horse teams.

              Firepower unbound

                              Industrial pyro-pathologies

 Burning day and night

                      Blind to deluge and drought

                 Billions          Coal

     Tons             Gallons               Gas

           Billions     Daily     Billions!    

                Unimaginable bounty

                  Essential inferno.

 

A world melting into a grandchild’s future.

Corey Weinstein is a retired physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He is an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band.

SPIN CYCLE

by Julie Steiner

Gallup’s annual survey of American attitudes about global warming, published last week, shows that Democrats are increasingly in agreement with the scientific consensus. A whopping 82 percent of Democrats said they believe that the effects of global warming have already begun. Meanwhile, only 29 percent of Republicans did, a record low. That’s a gap of 53 points; for comparison, in 2001, the gap was a mere 13 points. —Grist, April 13, 2021

The climate is extreme

these days: wet/dry, hot/cold.

But we are not to blame.

“An act of God,” we deem

each drought or flood. Behold,

the climate is extreme,

but man can’t cause, or tame,

such swings. They’re manifold,

but we are not to blame.

Fossil fuels may seem

at fault—to schoolgirls told

the climate is extreme

because of our regime

(and how we love black gold).

But we are not to blame:

before the Age of Steam,

catastrophes still rolled.

The climate is extreme.

Just is. Let experts scheme—

they’ve threatened, wept, cajoled—

but “We are not to blame”

remains our constant theme:

“Earth’s massive. Man can’t mold

the climate. Is extreme

misfortune—freeze or flame—

new-fangled? No, age-old,

bud! We are not to blame.”

As more disasters came,

we, too, came forth, to scold,

“The climate is extreme

in politics. For shame!

Poor sheeple, you’ve been trolled,

but we are not Tube-lame.”

The more we play this game,

the more R’s say (when polled)

the climate is extreme,

but we are not to blame.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides TheNewVerse.News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

SURVIVAL MATTERS

by John W. Steele  

The human cost of the climate crisis will hit harder, wider and sooner than previously believed, according to a study that shows a billion people will either be displaced or forced to endure insufferable heat for every additional 1C rise in the global temperature. —The Guardian, May 5, 2020. Photograph: An Indian farmer walks across the bed of a pond that has dried out during a water crisis. Credit: Sanjay Kanojia/AFP via Getty Images

Give us a pandemic or a war.

They bring out the best and worst of us.

Survival’s what we’re made for. Give us more.

Set the world on fire, let it roar.

We’ll find a way to put it out, no fuss,

then wrangle a pandemic or a war.

When the oceans breach suburban shores

watch what we do to save the upper crust.

Survival’s what we’re made for. Bring on more.

As for the slow creep of global warming

let science-based predictions gather dust.

We don’t want a pandemic or a war

to wake us up to what’s worth fighting for.

Renouncing fossil fuels would bankrupt us.

Survival’s what we’re made for, nothing more.

Our threatened habitats must be ignored.

Wall Street greed is where we place our trust.

Don’t give us a pandemic or a war.

Bottom line, we’re done for. And we want more. 

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Ernest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Boulder Weekly, Blue Unicorn, Colorado Sun, Copperfield Review, Heron Clan Anthology, IthacaLit, The Lyric, Mountains Talking, New Verse News, The Orchards, Society of Classical Poets, Urthona Journal of Buddhism and the Arts, and Verse-Virtual. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize, won The Lyric’s 2017 Fall Quarterly Award, won an award in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and was awarded Special Recognition in the 2019 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His book reviews have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Raintown Review. 

NOT ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

by Marilyn Peretti


Click here for more information on how to save the Earth.
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How do I not love thee earth?
Let me count the ways:
Monarchs leaving
Bees leaving
Polar bears leaving
Fires in the Arctic
Fires in Amazon forests
Microfiber in ocean fish
Microfiber in Arctic snow
Fossil fuels spitting from cars
Fossil fuels pouring from planes
   that depart every minute from
      somewhere
Lead in the water
Polluted water in Flint
Polluted water in Newark
Asbestos hiding everywhere
No water in Cape Town
Low water in Cairo
Low water in Bangalore
Glaciers melting - drip  drip
Funeral for glacier in Iceland
So, sea level rising along South Carolina
Sea level rising in Miami
Sea level rising in Brazosport
Sea level rising in Little Ferry

Shall I love thee better after death?

Marilyn Peretti from near Chicago, is Pushcart nominated, her poems published in Kyoto Journal, Journal of Modern Poetry, TheNewVerse.News, Rockford Review, Fox Cry Review, Talking River, Li Poetry (Chinese), Grey Sparrow, and others. Her books Let Wings Take You, Lichen-Poems of Nature, Angel's Wings, and To Remember-To Hope, are sold at the Blurb Bookstore.

CLIMATE

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

At last and quite suddenly autumn has arrived. From one day to the next foliage of the many deciduous trees hereabouts has turned from various shades of green to bright yellows, oranges, and reds. Temperatures have dropped so quickly our bodies are having trouble adjusting to the cold that is not truly cold by an reasonable standards but cold for here in our Mediterranean climate, especially in the nighttime when we pile on the layers for our after-dinner walks under the bright brittle stars. Long-awaited rains have come to town, not in ample amounts so far but delivering enough water to refresh the dry throats of the streams we visit several times a week. After a long hot season of silence they murmur contentedly and sound quite pleased with themselves. Today as we hiked around the lake we saw a few orange-bellied newts venturing from their hideouts and sashaying across the duff, full of hope no doubt like the rest of us that there will be a rainy rainy season to keep their skins moist while they forage the forest floor for bits of lichen and mushroom. Meteorologists are predicting a big one, a whiz-bang El Niño year with deluge after deluge, bound to shift our attentions from the summer of unprecedented heat we have just endured to the possibility that those quietly contented creeks will turn raucous and ornery, overflowing their banks as they are wont to do in monsoon years. But just now we can do little besides wait with a certain amount of excitement about the possible end of our drought and some trepidation that we could be leaping out of the frying pan into the flood. So sweatering up we walk the neighborhoods and the woods collecting big leaf maple and liquid amber and sycamore leaves to place in a bowl on the coffee table as we did with our children when they were small. And with my hands full of colors and my heart full of children and my head full of weather I think about the worsening climate crisis that threatens to do us in and I wonder about the sapience and sanity of those of our species who seem willing to risk the future of our young and of all our fellow beings rather than kick their addiction to dead dinosaurs.

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesday and others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

LAST DAYS: A RANT

by George Held

Between November 9–11, 2013, a large iceberg finally separated from the calving front of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Scientists first detected a rift in the glacier in October 2011 during flights for NASA’s Operation IceBridge. By July 2013, infrared and radar images indicated that the crack had cut completely across the ice shelf to the southwestern edge. New images now show that Iceberg B-31 is finally moving away from the coast, with open water between the iceberg and the edge of Pine Island Glacier. --NASA

                          The watchword to my remarks [on halting global warming] is urgency.
                                                      –Bill McKibben, Brown Alumni Monthly


How few dare face the fatality we face:
Our electrified, motorized civilization
Pollutes the planet; mammoth enterprises
Fight for scarce resources, including water,
“The new oil.”

Will your grandchildren have a pure drop
To drink unless your children
Can afford to pay hundreds of dollars
Per gallon? Will the poor, driven mad
By thirst, revolt with Kalashnikovs,

IED’s, machetes to seize water supplies
for their families? All that storm water flooding
and drowning Kansas and the Philippines,
Bangladesh and the Jersey Shore
And not a drop to drink.

Scientists report time is short, even Al Gore’s
100 years sound far too optimistic,
Yet what are you doing right now to stem
Our reliance on fossil fuels and advance
Our shift to renewable, sun and wind, power?

Right now what are you doing to save Mother
Earth from the ravages of global warming,
to keep air breathable, water drinkable,
Life livable? Do it, right now, for the last days
Are near. Tomorrow is too late.


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com