Like many poets, indeed many artists of all media, I am strongly drawn to nature, both as a source of imagery and a provoker of emotion. In our time of degraded nature, poisoned and choked bodies of water, and climate change, however, nature suddenly appears to be exceedingly fragile and endangered.
This state is what my poem “Assateague” addresses. The sand itself constantly shifts, reminding us that barrier islands are constantly changing shape and size, are extremely vulnerable to the sea level rises that come with warming oceans. The speaker is uncertainly rooted, aware of far off storms intensified by climate changes, and only maintains a tentative stance.
Assateague
The waves curl in and lave the shore,
drop their cargo of shells and polished glass,
then withdraw, clawing back the sand.
Sanderlings scatter, poke and pick, flee
incoming waves, chase them back out,
reverse, repeat.
I stand on spongy sand, solid enough
if a bit shaky, sea foam washing my feet.
Somewhere to the south on this overheating
planet, the ocean is boiling up, surging
under the lash of fierce cyclonic winds.
But for now I’m safe on the margin,
feet drawn into the restless sand.
“Katydids,” on the other hand, does offer some small hope in its reminder that these insects have been sounding in the summer night air for time immemorial and may go on for a long time into the future
(Side note: I have heard katydids my entire life and only recently realized that they were not another kind of cricket. One night in Arlington a few years ago I paused below a tree right in front of my apartment building and suddenly heard their chirping as “katy-did katy-did.” The poem followed.)
Katydids Katydids’ rattle rises above crickets’ rasp this mid-August night. It was ever thus in dwindling summer, evenings immemorial.
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Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace, Drinking Weather, Memory and Desire, Tile, and Riffs & Improvisations. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, and in several anthologies, including Written in Arlington (Paycock Press) and This Is What America Looks Like (Washington Writers Publishing House). In 2014 he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition, he serves as Literary Editor for Bourgeon magazine. Retired from the National Geographic Society, he lives in Arlington, VA, and works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC. He loves birds, music, and his dog, Bella, not necessarily in that order. Find him on Twitter @dctexpoet.
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Photo by Emma Kerr/USFWS via Wikimedia Commons