The Earth cries out in many ways
just trying to stay alive,
as too much carbon in the air
makes it hard to thrive.
Sunlight enters and heat gets trapped
so deserts grow and grow.
The flora and fauna start to die,
currents begin to slow.
Before the start of industry,
carbon was in balance.
Inhaled by trees and drunk by seas,
its presence was no challenge.
But now there’s more and more each year,
the cycles are amiss,
the vortex dives, the jet stream stalls—
here comes a weather abyss.
Endless droughts strike fields and farms,
setting the forests ablaze.
Glaciers retire, sea ice shrinks,
warming seas are raised.
The Arctic thaws, permafrost melts,
Antarctic ice shelves crack.
Corals die and wetlands drown—
they won’t be coming back.
A tipping point is finally reached.
There is nowhere to hide.
So many coastlines disappear,
it cannot be denied.
Africa pays the highest cost,
becoming a hotspot grave.
To warming it contributed least,
so how can it be saved?
Crops collapse and children cry,
hunger and illness prevail.
A border crisis can’t compare
to climate migration hell.
The sixth mass extinction is underway,
sadly caused by humans.
Millions of species disappear
as no one finds solutions.
When wolves don’t bay and bees don’t buzz,
the silence deadens seasons.
No fish to flop, no birds to watch,
they’ve all gone to their heavens.
The last ones stare at a hazy sky
and gasp a final breath—
a quarter million years of life
and nothing left but death.
—
Anne Gruner is a Pushcart nominee whose poetry has been in over a dozen print and online publications, including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, New Verse Newsletter, Written Tales, and Poetry Downtown 2024. Her other work has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Third Flatiron Review, Constellations: Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Hippocampus Magazine, Silver Blade Magazine, and others. A former CIA analyst, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers. https://www.annegruner.com/
