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.

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Lilies at Dusk