If it’s not drought, it’s fire or smoke,
temperatures rising, ice melting,
cattle dead in the fields, crops infested.
If it’s not fallen trees, floods,
people on roofs, their quilts, their photos,
their grandmothers washing downstream,
it’s oil in the water, chemicals, sewage,
hurricanes, tsunamis, cyclones,
the food we grow here where people hunger
sent somewhere else. It’s bulldozing forests
to build apartments and storefronts,
it’s farmland and pesticides for decades,
for miles, it’s the last Bachman’s warbler
not spotted for years now, missing.
These are all the reasons to give up hope,
to give up on the ways we don’t
save each other. But, I have a child
who loves running in autumn,
when leaves yellow, then brown, fall red,
in winter their crunch, dinosaur brown
in spring buds emerge from the underworld,
in summer green forest thick-licks wonder
as a color. A wren built a nest
inside the halo of the wreath
on my front door again, my dog
still follows me around the house
every morning. My hope is not gone,
I practice it every day when I notice
the rising sun, a puff of my cheeks
when I smile, clouds moving across
the sky, wind quaking trees, when
a cardinal and its red feather crest
flit-flies by me in search of food, as if I too
am just another part of this world
and know there is much more to do.
—
Liza Wolff-Francis is the 8th Poet Laureate of Carrboro, NC. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is a feminist ecopoet and has taught creative writing workshops for over a decade. Her writing has been widely anthologized and has most recently appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Walter Magazine, and Snapdragon. Her chapbook, Language of Crossing, is about the Mexico-U.S. border. She is the author of the full-length book, 48 hours down the shore (Kelsay Books).
