Are we too late?
Because I wonder what the world will look like in twenty years.
Can anything be done?
Does poetry help? Measuring loss and pain through broken lines.
Even the beetles know.
Fevered breeding or not — too many — not enough?
Gone, gone, gone — so many gone.
How did it go so wrong so quickly?
I don’t understand.
Just tell it to me plainly.
Knowing what I know now, I’d still live in the desert.
Let’s keep searching for solutions.
Maybe we’ll stumble on something that will eat the Pacific garbage patch.
Need we start from square one?
Openly I request —
please will more people see we are all connected?
Questions questions questions.
Reality?
Surely, there is more to do.
Tell me again about the pygmy rabbit, Tiehm’s buckwheat, the razorback sucker.
Unless. Unless —
Vainly humans go about life.
Was that chain smoking cultural anthropologist right in 1986 when he pointed to us with
deeply tobacco-stained fingers that the world was already doomed?
X X X. skull and crossbones poisons everywhere.
Yes, there is still hope, isn’t there?
Zed zip zilch.
—
DeAnna Beachley is a bird watcher, hiker, teacher, historian, poet, and essayist. Her poetry has appeared in Red Rock Review, Sandstone & Silver, Thimble, Slant, Blue Earth Review, Gyroscope, Liminal Spaces, Remington Review, Willows Wept Review, and Wild Roof Journal. Her debut chapbook, The Long View was released in June 2024 by Kelsay Books.
