I: The World from the Train

I travel the country by train
stare out the windows,
and every bit of beauty hurts.
The rivers, the lakes, the rain.
The woods, the wetlands, the prairie.
The fields.
The fields, and even the damn stupid lawns.
I want to believe they will be here
in another 50 or 100 years.
That they will outlive me.
We have changed the climate.
It’s a ridiculous thought, really.
How is it possible to change something
as fundamental as the climate?
I mean—say it out loud, to yourself
slowly, and really listen to the words:
We have changed The Climate.
Say it again and emphasize those last two words.
The.
Climate.

II: The World Evolved

Make it the air you breathe, or the water you drink,
or the soil.
Make it into something that the birds and plants know in their migrations
make it fast and slow, like flight
Make it relate to the thin papering olike rootedness.
Make it relate to the thin papering over of your body
called skin.
Make it the delicate balance of moisture in your children’s eyes that evolved, just so.

III: The Unmatched World

The way the seeds of this place match the soils of this place, match the rainfall, match the length of seasons at this precise distance from the equator, how the land tilts just so
on the spinning axis of the planet
and the way the everyday magic of food is coaxed from this complicated matching.

Except, make it not match anymore,
in the way you say the words. Make it honest: We have Changed The Climate.
Make it the exhaustion of 40 years of eyes wide open trying not to stare at the gas-powered
car wreck that is us.

We are, as you read this, continuing to
Change.
The.
Climate.

I know this. You know this.
What happens when the world doesn’t match anymore?

IV: The World from the Train

I watch the woods fly past,
and my longing for the deep green of the edges matching is so strong, I can hardly breathe.
Today, I have seen hawk, woodchuck, deer.
Goldenrod, oak, pond scum.
Water in a dozen forms:
still and blue,
mud-brown rivers,
water freefalling
in white ropes.
And cars. Bloody gobs of the things. Buildings, towers, fences,
both picturesque and razored,
marking ownership and separation with varying degrees of friendliness. And roads, thousands of miles of the stuff, taking us anywhere but
Home.

let the green earth overtake the pavement
paralyze highways still lined with cars
those totems of petroleum-fueled religion
let plants’ roots grow up and over skyscrapers
drag stone from stone and break glass
let vines obscure airports and train stations
fill mines and factories with flowers and pine cones
darken the windows of power plants
spread fungal connections farther and wider
free water to flow where it will
let unharvested trees grow old and tall
let fish flourish as whales sing the end of nets
bring all commerce to a standstill
so that we can silently
ponder what we are doing
what we have done

Look what’s out back, he says,
turning from the coffee pot, and we both
move closer to the windows. A young buck
stands near the compost pile,
turns his head, with its bony coronet,
to look around our yard, his temporary realm.
He takes a few steps,
holds his nose up in the air.
He turns his back
to sample the grass of the lawn
before moving into the woods again,
showing us only his lean yearling rump
and soft tail. He is done with us.

The first time I skated on a pond
I was betrayed;
ice once smooth as an inner thigh,
white as the sound of silence
no longer existed.
Ripples and water things
stuck in a death knell
as if Odin, king of northern skies
in a rush of exhalations
blew out frozen anger,
turned a pond
once green and soft
with fish and bulrush
into a shadow of itself
and I was not welcomed.
I was my sharpened blades
tremulous, baffled, unsure
fearful of the uneven, unknown
gray-white ice not pristine,
not familiar with music
or wooden benches
or snack stands
of hot dogs and pizza—
no skating crowds
laughing, pirouetting
falling, getting up again.
Here a handful of people and me
in my toe-ridged fancy skates
and the dead fish
who looked up through the ice
wide eyed,
mouth opened in wonder.

Decades later I remembered that fish,
that look when death glides in
on spectral blades
to a bedside with sheets
white as ice.

At the periphery of my garden
I watch the stripling tree
bend almost double
as if to taste the earth with its leaves.

Today the March wind carries the sharpness
of angry words in its voice,
whips the air with a cat-o-nine tails
burred and blind,

strikes out as a small child
furious with shame,
would vehemently deny
a minor sin caught by the good son.

The tree like a supplicant
asking pardon from a priest
reaches out only to be
chastised, slapped backwards.

Unsteady as it stands,
feels its roots grasp hard;
its place at the edge of the walk,
tenuous.

Then without signal the battle is over.
Spent like a worn-out tantrum,
the wind exhausted
goes to ground, sleeps.

the tree, too young, too naïve
to know better, thinks it has won.

North of Frog Pond
a path is beaten
into the snow so worn
that it can bear your weight
without rackets.
withoutRabbits run under moonlight,
the icy breeze
blows off the water,
turns the fresh fallen powder
to a concrete road.
withoutCheck the snares,
roadblocks that
imprison the hare,
brass wire squeezes
the neck like
a corset.
Blood stains
fur and trail.

Why did the herd
not take hold here?
not take hold hIt worked for the moose.
Maybe they went
back to the crates and cranes
which hoisted them
through the sky,
where they conversed
with seagulls.
Maybe they floated back
across the harbour on
rafts that bowed under
their mass
so that their hooves
cooled in ocean water.
cooled iPerhaps they traveled west
back to the prairies,
where oil rigs towered over earth
like tall grass
in the vast plains.
cooled iI imagine them asking
like their ancestral kin after that
first whip of rain,
first crunch of Newfoundland soil,
first taste of sea salt from the coastline,
how on earth do we survive here?
cooled iBiologists blamed
rocky shores, sheer cliffs,
and lack of buoyancy
on their extinction,
bison so use to open fields
and rolling hills that
they stepped right off the side of
Brunette Island
sinking out of sight,
an anchor or
chum for the leviathan
swimming in the dark
where myth eats myth.

‘withdrawal effects
can be severe and prolonged ’
Dr J. Moncrieff

That was the year
Thatof seared flesh and fishbones,
the year I was landed
the yegasping for breath, gulping
thin air, jerking and juddering
the yeon the slimy ground
as a knife eased my body
the yethe yfrom its backbone
and someone roasted the very small
the yepieces of me
beneath a mackerel sky

from the woods
my footsteps

lifting me upwards
a little lighter now

my breathing stronger
than before; a few nodding

grasses with their dancing
string of seeds, birdsong

in my pocket. This leaf
skeleton light as a fish scale

with its fragile golden tracery;
this net of sunlight

holding it all.

She snugged headphones over my ears
told me to raise a hand whenever
I heard a beep, no matter how soft or brief,
played a rolling ocean in one ear,
in the other a low chime, then a fly’s whine,
the wheezy squeak of a brown-headed nuthatch,
the faintest peep from the desert rain frog.

At each sound I raised my hand,
a half-hearted wave
to the blue whale’s low rumble,
the honeybee’s warm hum,
even to the whispery breath
of a monarch’s wingbeats.

You’re fine, she said,
no hearing loss at all.
But I knew she was wrong
as I walked out into the sunshine
straining to hear what was gone.

the forest has lungs
older than breath.
they expand
with moss-thick silence,
exhale in birdless echoes.

i once slept
against its ribs —
wet bark pressed to my back
like a palm
forgetting how to hold.

roots rise like undone stitches
from the bruised earth,
threads that do not
carry anything anymore
except memory
and insects.

every branch is a gesture
i failed to understand —
warnings, maybe,
or welcomes
delivered too late.

it never asked
who i was.
it still doesn’t.