THE SEA CANNOT SPEAK FOR ITSELF

by Renée M. Schell

More than half of the world’s ocean has changed colors in the past 20 years, a phenomenon that is likely driven by climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study, which analyzes decades’ worth of satellite data, found that 56% of the global ocean—a territory larger than the total land area on Earth—experienced color change between 2002 and 2022. While the researchers didn’t identify an overall pattern, tropical ocean regions near the Equator seem to have become steadily greener over time. (Photo: Edoardo Fornaciari—Getty Images) —Time, July 13, 2023

Fifty-six percent has become green.

Can we still say azure ocean

or blue sea?

 

Now Aqua, the research satellite,

reflects back the lush color

of phytoplankton,

 

tells us with its seeing eye

that for the past twenty years the vast

waters of Earth have been changing 

color.

 

With chlorophyll out of balance,

how can our oceans,

the teeming gallons,

 

survive this attack?

Revert back?

 

 

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in The New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She taught for seven years at a Title I elementary school in San José, California. 

THE WATERS OF LAKE MEAD

by Alfred Fournier

Water levels at Lake Mead have fallen dramatically amid a record drought. Compare the satellite images of the lake in 2000 and in 2022, and you can see the stark decline. NASA Earth Observatory via Vox, August 17, 2022

shrunken by drought, 

reveal body by body our sins: 

missing children and sunken mob hits,

bricks heaved into once-deep water. 

Inch by inch, layers of strata denuded 

become sheets of ancient music 

played on instruments of doom. 

One last chorus for the climate scientists, 

our voices rising in thin atmosphere,

where far above the moon peers down. 

Is that a frown on the old man’s face, 

or does our willful dance with fate amuse him? 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, International Times, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. 

SPOTTED FROM SPACE

by Martin Elster

In recent satellite imagery captured by Planet, which operates the world's largest pack of Earth-observing satellites, large groups of walruses can be seen crowding Earth's coastlines, all the way from space. The image shows ambiguous, "distinctive red-brown" blobs decorating the Alaskan coastline. Previously, walruses would gather in groups of up to many thousands, called "haulouts," on Arctic sea ice far from the shore. But with sea ice melting at rapid speeds due to climate change, they have no choice but to gather on land. —Space.com, November 5, 2021

Thousands of walruses (called “haulouts”) gather

along Alaskan shores, spotted from space.

They’re resting ample bodies, but they’d rather

veg out on sea ice. Yet there’s not a trace

of frozen H2O. A satellite 

has taken photographs. How can they eat

or sleep now? Humans may create a fright.

Many will perish in their mad retreat,

tumbling en mass to the safety of the ocean.

Monitoring their populations might

show how, through climate change, they may persist.

Yet when at last they’re gone, will they be missed?

These mammals know this world is not all right.

These mammals know there is no magic potion.

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (now retired). He finds contentment in long woodland walks and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

EARTH LIGHTS

by Sally Zakariya

Artist's Conception of the Humanity Star from Cumbrian Sky.

Rocket Lab Just Launched a Disco Ball into Orbit—

And It Could Be the Brightest Star in the Sky 

—Newsweek, January 25, 2018

In the Big War, I’m told,
they turned off all the lights
at night to fool the bombers

But now earth lights shine
out to space, tracked day
and night by some celestial
bird circling with a camera
tracing longitude and latitude
orbit by orbit, building a map
of where we light up, where
we outshine the stars at night

Our lights spill out like dirty
wash water from a pail
across a shiny clean floor
and now someone launched
a fake star into the sky—a
disco ball that will reflect
the sun’s rays back to earth

Humanity Star the makers call
their sparkling orb, and just like
the humans it was named for
this flashing star pollutes
the heavens, graffiti in the sky

Sally Zakariya’s Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry has appeared in some 70 print and online journals and won prizes from Poetry Virginia and the Virginia Writers Club. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and Other Verses (2011), and the editor of a poetry anthology Joys of the Table (2015). A former magazine editor, Zakariya lives in Arlington with her husband and two cats.