climate change shouts with smoke

 Conservation Is Conservative

below the plane nothing of the land

shouts itself through the layer of white-out,

we knife through the clouds

and red rock mountains hazily appear,

with small patches of snow

like little tufts of hair on a balding man,

green paints itself on some of the slopes

and sinuously follows the valleys,

July usually expresses itself in clarity of air here:

each view sharp, etched with the brash exuberance of youth,

these mountains so young compared to my Appalachian friends,

now the smoke from faraway fires

hugs the views with a dimming grayness,

echoing the Southern Appalachians called Smoky Mountains,

where excess moisture often hides the view

to smudge distance and particularity,

climate change is real,

and the ubiquitous smoke shouts to us to wake up,

to notice the havoc caused by our blindness to consequence

in how we act upon the world,

we all must work to conserve what we have, what we need,

so that our grandchildren’s grandchildren can also prosper,

how ironic that the obscuring of the visual

might bring climate change clearer,

the scary forms coming at us surer to see.

by Henry H. Walker

July 23, ‘21