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. 

THE DEFINITION OF HARM

by Pepper Trail

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

The Trump administration on Friday moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century. It did so by recasting a single word, “harm.” For more than 50 years, the federal government has used a broader definition of harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law. It included any significant “modification or degradation” of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed... But on Friday, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced a final rule that rescinded this longstanding interpretation. Under the rule, destroying an endangered species’ nest or habitat would no longer be considered illegal. —The New York Times, July 10, 2026

Time passed and the madman continued.

Today it was to say the home, the whole living world –

I am speaking of you, the owl, the butterfly, the desert grouse—

is nothing, is to be taken, cleared, burned, drilled

and that has no consequence,

as the capture and disappearance of mothers and fathers,

that has no consequence,

as the end of relief for the dark-skinned dying,

that has no consequence,

as the meanings of words,

they have no consequence.

To the madman it is all a game,

made up every night, announced every morning,

changed every afternoon,

himself against the world, the only rule

being that he must never lose,

if only he knew how to win, to be satisfied.

And so everything is fed into the flames,

the beautiful world, the work of the best minds,

the lives of the children and the artists

and those who want only to live in peace,

because anything free of him

must be brought to heel, or

when that again,

when that always, fails,

must, he delares, be destroyed.

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

I WILL MISS THE LARGE ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA

by Michael Brockley

Woody Guthrie in March 1943.

The bison. The grizzly bears. The jaguars that can’t leap over the wall along the border river. I will miss reading irreverent books. Novels where Jesus has a friend named Biff. Comic books where Deadpool is a hero. I will miss news reporters who know that Kansas City is in Missouri and that Benjamin Franklin never resided in the White House. I will miss the White House. The Smithsonian, the Statue of Liberty, and Yellowstone. I will wonder how Old Faithful might be disappeared. I will miss pennies. And the Beatitudes, the part of the Bible Kurt Vonnegut valued the most. I will miss voting for women. I will miss movies that tell the stories of men and women who don’t look like me. I will miss being able to see Venus and Mars on clear nights. I will miss strawberries and tomatoes and watermelons and sweet potatoes and cranberries and sunflowers and cherries. I will miss guitars with This Machine Kills Fascists scrawled across their bodies. I will miss dogs that look more like wolves than weapons of war. I will miss saying  Feliz Navidad, Fröhliche Weihnachten, and Mele Kalikimaka. I will miss finger-pointing songs. I will miss licorice. Yes, I will even miss licorice.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana, His prose poems have appeared in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Red Eft Review, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. Brockley's prose poems are also forthcoming in Ley Lines Literary Review, Seat at the Table, and Alien Buddha.

WHAT’S THAT ANIMAL DOING HERE?

by Cecil Morris

In this provided photo from Oct. 13, 2024, an arctic fox is sheltered at the Bird Alliance of Oregon, after being spotted in Portland last week. After her arrival at the facility on Saturday, an exam confirmed her species, and determined the young female was hungry and dehydrated. The Bird Alliance is working with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine her next home. Courtesy of Bird Alliance of Oregon via Oregon Public Broadcasting.

First the deer grew bold, wandered between houses
and ate the blossoms and tender new growth
from the ornamentals we had planted.
They lifted their long heads, their mouths trailing
some asters or dahlia greens, their eyes wide
and unblinking, unconcerned by our presence.
They stood in our yards as placid as spring
their big ears unbothered by passing cars.
Yes, the crows, the jays, the shrieking seagulls
have long been fearless, ever intrusive,
like blackberry brambles pushing through fence
and dandelions lifting through the dirt,
insistent, tireless, quietly present.
And hungry cougars came down from the hills
to threaten joggers, snack on yapper dogs,
and haunt our dreams with their sleek fitness,
prowling embodiments of fear and guilt.
And now this—an arctic fox in Portland,
a seldom snowy metro area
of millions almost half way down the globe
toward the equator. Escaped, illegal pet?
Intrepid advanced scout for nature’s
reclamation of lost lands? One more sign
that we and all our works are just a part
of nature, as much its environs as ours?
Sure, she has that cute dog face and could be
a good best friend, a companion fluffy
and warm, but what will come next? Rangy wolves?
Polar bears after new blubbery foods
arranged along a street downtown? Slick slugs?
We are selfish and we don’t want to share.
We want wildlife to stay where it belongs.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

EARTHLINGS

by Peter Witt

If earth was my father, he’d sit me down

for the talk, about how the birds and bees

are under threat, how humankind has polluted

its nest, and how our actions may doom us

to the inevitably of a rage of forest fires,

hurricanes, tornadoes and other

devastating weather events.

 

If earth was my mother, she’d send me

to my room, cut off my social media

for a month, make me eat green vegetables

and fresh fruit instead of junk food

that comes in non-degradable packaging.

 

If earth was my mentor, he’d tutor me in ways

to live a life that respects the planet, take on

advocacy roles that can reverse the holocaust

of degradation that human greed has wrought.

 

If earth was my lover, she’d touch me in ways

that reach deep in my being, hold me close,

look into my eyes and beg me to love

her forever for the sake of every rock, ocean,

mountain, turtle, rabbit, snake, and ladybug.

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

A "NEW" YEAR BEGINS

by Gordon Gilbert

wild geese, Hudson River Park, NYC

the same earth that buries the dead 

nourishes new life coming forth from that same soil 

 

the same air through which the dead leaves fall 

lifts the wings of those who call it home

 

the same water that overwhelms in sudden storms 

and drowns those who can't escape to higher ground 

gives life and shelter to aquatic beings 

and is from whence we came and still we need

 

the same fire that destroys all in its path 

we harness for our purposes and progress 

 

destruction and creation, condemnation, resurrection 

but alternatives among a multitude 

coexistent in a four dimensional realm 

in one of a multiplex of universes 

the one that we inhabit

 

we are no different from that from which we came 

neither truly good nor evil in our nature 

 

we are but the natural progression and expression 

of a larger whole with this exception:  

we self-conceive and give that self expression 

 

now here we are again the same side of the sun  

this moment that we choose to call a "new" year 

a starting line across the oval track our planet travels 

artificially designated, of recent origin 

not that once chosen by

hunters, gatherers, herders and farmers 

in many lands, in many other eras 

 

we have come so far we tell ourselves 

but we have gone so far from where we were 

and we are lost now to the earth that birthed us 

before it is too late, we must return, reclaim

who and what we truly are 

we must be born again 

Gordon Gilbert is a long-time resident of the West Village in NYC who has found solace and inspiration for the past two years in his walks along the Hudson River, photographing and writing about the wildlife, flora and river traffic during the pandemic as the seasons changed.

ANTHROPOCENE ANXIETY

by Steven Croft

Illustration from The Guardian, October 23, 2021

As the beehive of news stories grew,

scientists reporting back from Greenland's

shrinking ice sheet, coral reefs in Australia, the Florida Keys,

the feedback loops of forests lost and wildfire,

a beehive building like the global sauna our

drowsy governments offer an impossible treaty to slake,

suddenly a question rose before me:

why are we losing our grip on our world's biggest problem?

Because it is too far gone to hold?

Because floodwater and crabgrass want our cities?

Miners complain about the earth's heat

as they dig lower for coal to send to the surface.

Metaphor become metamorphosis.

Today, I can't look at a dome of beautiful October sky

without my mind's eye seeing a blue-lit jail

for a fevered planet, without my mind's ear hearing

buffalo herds of wind speaking in tongues

of shrieks across this doomed green land.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

WILLOW WEEP FOR ME

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Caribou calves in the Utukok uplands in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Photo Credit: Patrick Endres/ Design Pics Inc., via Alamy and The New York Times.

The Biden administration defended in federal court the Willow project, a huge oil drilling operation proposed on Alaska’s North Slope that was approved by the Trump administration and is being fought by environmentalists… The multibillion-dollar plan from ConocoPhillips to drill in part of the National Petroleum Reserve would produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day until 2050. It is being challenged by environmental groups who said the Trump administration failed to consider the impact that drilling would have on fragile wildlife and that burning the oil would have on global warming… In a paradox worthy of Kafka, ConocoPhillips plans to install ‘chillers’ into the permafrost—which is thawing fast because of climate change—to keep it solid enough to drill for oil, the burning of which will continue to worsen ice melt. —The New York Times, May 28, 2021

on the other hand... 

The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge… The decision sets up a process that could halt drilling in one of the largest tracts of untouched wilderness in the United States, home to migrating waterfowl, caribou and polar bears. —The New York Times, June 1, 2021

Mother Nature’s

non-human earthlings

 

cultivate in the hearts    

of those

     who pay attention    

 

this wisdom:   

as we have co-evolved    

with human dwellers

they have relied   

on our nurturance

and guidance.

Earth now demands    

reciprocation. 

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Penning her life’s passions into poetry has become the delight and vocation of her silvering years. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions 2015 anthology, Soul-lit Journal of Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and The New Verse News. Five of her poems have been turned into a song cycle entitled Resistance by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham. Her chapbook Being Kin was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.

AUSTRALIA'S BURNING

by Laura Rodley

This is for the kangas,
the koala bears,
the duck billed platypus,
the lizards in the soil,
this is for the tree trunks
left standing, for the people,
for the sky full of smoke
above them, I wish you
great clouds of rain,
nimbus clouds bottom heavy
to quench your thirst,
no more fire-induced thunderheads,
to avoid more lightning strikes.
I wish you moist cooling breezes
sent from far out in the ocean,
a place to rest.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project for Center for New Americans. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

AMAZON FIRE MONEY

by Kristin Yates






We’re consumed by the beef
we’re broiling
Earth’s lungs
to farm more cattle
we are burning every
minute the size of a football
field to breed, slit

over 40 million
throats

Lungs, logged

$Indigenous persons, the Mura tribe Jaguar Cashapona tree, the Barrigona tree
Pataxó tribe Giant Armadillo, the Parintintin tribe Harpy Eagle Strangler Fig tree

are the change
ranchers gain
but do not count

as if they own the forest

charred, already spent


Kristin Yates hopes more than space can see the price of our consumption. #ActForAmazonia

THE GREAT WALL OF AMERICA

by Martin Elster

A family of javelinas encounters the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border near the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. (Image credit: Matt Clark / Defenders of Wildlife via Stanford Earth)

On a planet in a cosmos far away
there’s a USA that’s not the USA,
edged by a wall so ugly, Cooper’s hawks
and vultures will not perch atop it. Flocks
of bats and buntings ram it, while the turtle
and turkey blink and boggle at that hurdle
whose stainless teeth impale the stratosphere,
whose reach makes creatures prisoners all year.
Poets and meditators often wake
with hearts and kidneys missing. A mistake?
or just a program glitch inside a dream
hammered into heads by the regime
which built that barrier? Not the fiercest gale
nor hurricane nor earthquake can upset it.
Even the butterflies, bees, and beetles dread it.
Jumbo jet or Zeppelin or kite—
none dare traverse it. With the appetite
of a thousand whales, it gulps them in a bite.
When master mountaineers attempt to scale
the wall, they fall, or languish in a jail
with all the rest who waste away inside
a country or a cooler and abide
by the common rules in a cosmos far away
where the USA is not the USA.

Martin Elster, a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, has poems in numerous journals and anthologies. Honors include co-winner of Rhymezone’s 2016 poetry contest, winner of the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry Competition 2014, third place in the SFPA’s 2015 poetry contest, and three Pushcart nominations.

HAZE IN THE AIR

by Jayne Marek

Image source: CTV News Vancouver

morning sky furred by a pale layer so the sun is deep orange
sailor take warning          firefighter take warning

a layer so thin it passes over the Strait like hands giving blessing
but five miles distant          there is no more island

heat even in the northlands begins to rise to spread
to reach inside          where breath scrapes one’s throat

there is so much dried to a crust so anguished and tight
it resists water that could save it          it will shed

the chemicals of desperation in the gray understory
of neglected woods          it will begin to die

all by itself even without the fire stringing its way underneath
the bones of grass          the shattered nests

of starved quail and under the lost tooth of a coyote
that could no longer run          death of the hunter

death of the stands of cedar and fir of alder and salal
death to us all          take up the shovel

and begin to dig a fire line not yet needed on this acre
but what fell from human grasp          will soon blow here

Jayne Marek’s first full-length poetry book is In and Out of Rough Water. Her poetry and art photos appear in About Place Journal, 3Elements, Sin Fronteras, Notre Dame Review, Sliver of Stone, Spillway, Tipton Poetry Journal, Central American Literary Review, and elsewhere.

I CANNOT SAVE

by Howard Winn

“January 2015- BC’s War on Wolves continues: As you read this, wolves in British Columbia, Canada are being shot at by hunters in helicopters. This is an ill-conceived plan to save endangered caribou in B.C.. The wolves are not responsible for the dwindling caribou numbers; habitat loss and human encroachment are. But wolves are taking the blame and paying the price. B.C. Wolves Need Your Help: Consider donating to our Indiegogo Campaign. Sign the Save B.C. Wolves petition.” --PACIFICWILD.org

I cannot save
them all
the wolves and walruses
the manatee and elephants
the white rhino and
the mountain gorilla
not to mention the cod
and the tarpon
of course we have
already lost the
passenger pigeon
so nothing to do there
but perhaps we
can save the redwoods
although they are
unlikely to personally care
as with the need to save
the Colorado River
and the Amazon rain
forest which is being
clear cut for agriculture
so we have to save
the indigenous people
who live in the woods
and the song birds that
are the tiny relics
of the extinct dinosaurs
so much to save and
I cannot finish the list
if only I were a heartless
sociopath without empathy
or a care in the universe
beyond my selfish self
like the Ayn Rand disciples
one could be oblivious
and blissful in the face
of obvious total extermination
as the earth we know
turns into Mars, Pluto, or Ceres.


Howard Winn’s poetry and fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals such as The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Dalhousie Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Journal, Blueline, and Sediments Literary Arts Journal. He is a State of New York University Professor of English.

ON THE VACANT BRANCH OF THE SPOTTED OWL

by Tricia Knoll

Killing barred owls will aid recovery of Oregon's spotted owls, federal wildlife officials believe. --The Oregonian, July 23, 2013

Talons withdrawn, nests gone,
the spotted owl loses its grip
on security, abundance, old-growth,
silenced victims of manipulated
moaning forest. The wind hears
loss

in the call of the barred
owl, manifest west from the east,
filling a niche
like the coyote
jumping at chance, taking bets

to eat what the wolf wouldn’t,
go where the wolf couldn’t.

An answer: slaughter 3,600
barreds. Invite spotteds
to return and they will
say biologists managing trays
of barred dead. The wind
puzzles out wagers of kills
to save life.

A croupier spins the wheel.
Wrenching bets on black, and the ball
explodes.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. In these days of dwindling biodiversity, she was recently thrilled to see a barred owl on a highway stanchion in Seattle, a place the spotted would never light.