28 September 2019

The Warm Up (poem) re: Friday's Climate Strike

Here’s a draft of a brief poem written off-the-cuff in response to, and in support of, yesterday’s climate strikes principally by high-school students around the globe. Self-publishing this one feels nearly right to me because of the urgency around this action, and its on-the-ground politics. So.


The Warm Up

An adolescent tide, a human tide
washes—no, spills—into the public squares           
and common spaces of their killed planet,

our culpable and shared and broken earth.
Swells of DIY placards, stubby memes
magic-markered onto rescued cardboard

and bristol board repurposed from blue bins,
call out the dire, decrepit quietude
of preemptive middle age: change your life,

change your life. A hoarse, electric chorus
of shouts and bullhorns rises, crowd-sourcing
raw, fierce unction. Who sutures the world’s wounds?

There’s no coming back from extinction, obvs.
Show us how to march the torn line between
what can be done and what can’t be undone.


Skolstrejk for Klimatet, Vancouver and elsewhere, 27 September 2019