Solastalgia

Someone said don’t write about three trees and a lake,
and, god, don’t include animals unless they’re feral
or bloodied. Birds only as carcass, preferably half-eaten,
or rotting, or both. Absent a shit-storm, leave the page
blank. Think fifteen-story glacier gone to ground
off Ferryland, its mass mostly hidden beneath sea.

Everything is rising—heat, temper. Tides sun-flooding,
so coastal roads sprout rulers at their lows. Caution’s
weight, these wide slats straight as saplings marking sky.
The yard over, someone topped three old sweet gums;
they look like amputees. Think buck with half a rack.
A bat wing-ripped, or a halved worm. Think sea star
stuck on roadside measure, trying on regeneration.

The lake doesn’t recall their reflected oval crowns,
green-heavy, fruited. Not even the trees remember
their absent twigs, plated to grow into deep-scaled limbs,
or rusty-haired flowers hardening into globed pillars.
Tiny worlds set one on the other, expectant of their fall.
Like Eve in poor patchwork of leathery leaves, they stand.

Three trees, properly tended, can outlive four generations.
A lake-stopped river can become river again, or a dry bed
wracked by drought, or storm-flooded in rainier seasons.
We assume humanity’s mark has histories of meaning.
These inhospitable times score their own brand.
Come autumn, lawn will not recall the lost, weighty burrs.
Who won’t forget, our autumn, their lonely silhouettes?

Composition

Capture the deer ankle deep in the pond
an hour before dusk, drinking, frolicking
in spring’s green reflection, when too much world
hangs behind white clouds blotting azure sky,
and think maybe hillocks, green grass, and deer
will be enough to remake the earth’s image,
when all the horrors filed under humanity
are stamped closed and shredded, ready to join
the pulping pile. Surely, breaking elements
out of dregs can grant new forms a chance
at life, while leaving deer, necks bent to drink.
Surely, we don’t have to displace mallards
nesting in high grass, the red-winged blackbird
breezing for bugs, as we, reckless, gauge value.