Miss Hartung Explains Climate to the Intermediate School
Listen closely, children, winter is
an aging relative who will visit
less and less. Because the ice
is thinning, floods will fill your lives.
At the North Pole, a meltwater lake
has formed. In Greenland, in one day,
twelve billion tons of ice has melted.
Be happy to wear your clumsy boots
and mittens. Already, your snowmen
are crawling north like the bark beetles
who are coming to slaughter your forests.
Whisper “climate change” to each other
like a forbidden word. It’s as imminent
as sex. Soon you will say it aloud
like the obscenities you already love.
Those men who will not repeat it
have decided to save only themselves.
You all know the power of taboo.
Say it aloud and shame them to flame.
Remember how the wildfire last time
leveled Paradise to a stencil for hell?
This year, fires are ravaging the Arctic.
The wind, children, loves embers so much
it sometimes carries them safely for miles.
Always check to see what’s tumbling
and floating with the seeds and spores.
Those pretty things will descend by chance
to where destruction can root and prosper.
GARY FINCKE's newest book is For Now, We Have Been Spared: Poems (Slant Books 2025). Read more.