MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

by Thomas J. Erickson

In 30 years no one will remember that it snowed here
52 years ago on the 4th of July and that it was so cold
that the high school band had to play in the school bus
with the windows down.

In 30 years tops or whenever the last of my sons

has left this globe, no one will know my father

never swam in Lake Superior when he was growing up

a few hundred yards from Gitcheegumee

because it was so damn cold back then.

Soon enough, no one but me will even think

about how beautifully fucked up this is: To now be able 

to swim in the turquoise water of the Magic Coves

to dive to the shipwreck off Chapel Rock

to do the dead man’s float in the secluded expanse

off Lonesome Point.

So I hope you find this bottle someday on some shore

somewhere if there still are shores somewhere:

There was an August when I swam far enough out

to get to the sand bar and stood there for a while.

I was surprisingly far from shore and when I turned

around it was endlessly blue.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee where he writes poetry while sitting in court waiting for his case to be called. He spends his summers in a little town on the shores of Lake Superior in Upper Michigan where, in recent years, it's been warm enough to swim come August.

THE OILIGARCHS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

We are living in deadly heat

We are living in a climate inferno

Growing in intensity season by season

We are living in fire

We are living in weather conditions

Created by avarice and greed

Created by the princes of petroleum

The captains of capital

We are witnessing temperatures soar

We are witnessing our fellow humans

Particularly the most vulnerable

Expire of the extreme heat –

People living on the streets

With nowhere to escape the sun

Elders with weakened immune systems

Infants whose little bodies cannot cope

The weather today:

110 degrees in Phoenix, 107 in Grand Junction

105 in Tulsa, 101 in Casper,

No relief in sight

When I was a young boy

We lived near a greenhouse

Where the neighborhood kids sometimes gathered

On sub-zero winter days

The embracing warmth

The rich, organic stink of humus

And manure and decomposing straw,

The summer-in-winter just next door

We knew why the heat couldn’t escape

Up through those hundreds of glass panes

We learned it in sixth-grade science:

The greenhouse effect

An exquisitely balanced system

That lets just the right amount of heat out

That keeps just the right amount of heat in

That makes life on earth possible

Now carbon emissions have thickened the glass

To trap more heat

To skew the ancient equilibrium

To weaponize the weather

We have protested outside office buildings

We have blockaded refinery entrances

We have ranted and chanted and invoked the future

To change the hearts and minds of the oiligarchs 

To remind them of sixth-grade science 

To remind them of the delicate balance

To demand that they cease and desist

But they won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t… stop…

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

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 HOLLER

by Tricia Knoll

The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster. To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them. Charles Calhoun, Courier Journal, August 16, 2022

Since 1958, the amount of precipitation during heavy rainstorms has increased by 27 percent in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly heavy rainstorms is likely to continue. – What Climate Change Means for Kentucky, EPA, August 2016

When you have always lived in the holler

and the mortgage come due or the river

trickles your worries downstream, you accept

barking dogs, loose chickens in the road

and rusted trucks in the side yard. Kittens

thrive for a while. You know the business

and love affairs of neighbors and grandmothers.

Who has work and who doesn’t. 

Children know barefoot, few strangers,

and security in familiar. Ponies

run lean and the women leaner, 

mountains tall and a gravel lane narrow

—funnels for floodwater.  

 

You could say the name came from hollows

but you don’t. You honor salty talk while

a warming planet has its say with

record rains few had time to measure.

 

Refrigerators float and homes sweep down

to wrap around trees. You can scrabble

up a hillside, but like so many places

what grandparents built is gone. 

The holler has only one way out

 

and yours will never be the same. 

Tricia Knoll does not live in a holler but knows that everywhere is vulnerable to climate change.

MELT

by Chad Parenteau

“Heat Check” by Headlines at The Nib, July 8, 2021.

If the earth

is warming

why is there

still ice?

It’s summer.

Leave affairs

to boil on

picnic table.

Why else our

country a pot

if we’re not

to pour in?

Stand ground,

plant feet

in malleable

tar roads.

Cook skin

to bronze,

be own

memorial.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.