Fifth presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco joined Boston Public Radio on Monday to preview a new poetry anthology from the front lines of climate change: "A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis," edited by Meghan Sterling and Kathleen Sullivan.
Blanco told Jim and Margery the poems go "beyond the political, preaching, ranting" about climate change to "really shift our consciousness" around the issue.
He read a few poems from the anthology:
"After A Sign In Harbor Fish Market Portland, Maine"
by Lucia Owen
We cannot guarantee the life of lobsters.
or of the piping plovers nesting on Old Orchard Beach.
Or of the little brown bat, the monarch butterfly
the Panamanian golden frog or the polar bear.
We regret that We can no longer support your access
to strawberries in January, asparagus from Chile, designer lattes
and thirteen choices of toothpaste.
(We acknowledge your requirements but
We are experiencing technical difficulties.)
In addition, We find We cannot guarantee
that your luggage will arrive when you do
or that your children will get into Harvard.
Or that the banquet of the world spread out before you
Will remain your own personal picnic.
Hard as it is for Us to say and you to hear,
We cannot guarantee the life of lobsters.
"Night Walk, February"
by Erin Covey-Smith
The air still and smooth and supple
as I walk, embracing when I expect
to brace. The stars exacting, the
ocean, contemplative. All singing
a sideways beauty.
This world, which I had once again
edged into taking for granted, thaws,
slips, reminds me it is mutable,
disappearing and temporal as anything.
It's the damn spirit of the thing—
clinging steadfastly to the bright stars,
to the light reflecting on stolid water—
which makes me lean in, rely on presence.
So that I forget, again and again, and
love wholly and without pain. And so
even when I remember, brought up
short by all that aches and melts
around me, I love more wholly still,
with pain.
"Montana Fields"
by Michael Colbert
A brown barn erupts from fields ground
to dirt. Yellow median lines conduct
us forward.
We’re going to a Newcastle brewery.
On Sunday in September.
Here, we’d survive
disease or
zombies we think.
Out here we’d live off potatoes and blueberries.
The beer tastes planetary on our tongues.
We get a growler and hip-hop
striped sweatshirts.
Maine will be safe
they say.
We have the landscape and the resources,
they say.
We’ve met a man from The NRDC.
He will move to Montana with
the way our oceans rise and how with fingertips
he tries to shove sand up the hourglass. The NRDC man will go,
and here we drink our beer.
On rides to Skowhegan, to Presque Isle,
I count solar panels on homes–eleven.
I count wind turbines–zero.
I count the seconds between encountering another human–many.
I told my mom I wonder about having
kids
"Codicil"
by Meghan Sterling
To you, my daughter,
whose earth may not be my earth,
whose earth may be scorched
with flames
whose earth may be ripped
apart by gunfire and blood,
whose earth may wilt
under the heat of a too-near sun,
whose earth may reveal her
ocean beds to be desert skin,
whose earth may be hardened with
sand and rock,
whose earth may wither
dry as a peach stone,
whose earth may be divided
by walls and colors,
whose earth may be sunk
with pills and powders,
whose earth may thunder
with the rattling of trucks,
whose earth may be
sour with salt,
whose earth may be
drowned in melt,
to you I bequeath
all the courage in
all the birds and flowers
water and stones,
all the toughness of trees
and the heart
to love enough,
to be strong enough,
stronger than we were.
