Particulate Matter
Molly Fisk
If all you counted were tires on the cars left in driveways and stranded beside the roads.
Melted dashboards and tail lights, oil pans, window glass, seat belt clasps.
The propane tanks in everyone’s yards, though we didn’t hear them explode.

R-13 insulation. Paint, inside and out. The liquor store’s plastic letters in puddled
colors below their charred sign. Each man-made sole of every shoe in all those closets.
The laundromat’s washers’ round metal doors.

But then Arco, Safeway, Walgreens, the library—everything they contained.
How many miles of electrical wire and PVC pipe swirling into the once-blue sky:
how many linoleum acres? Not to mention the valley oaks, the ponderosas, all the wild

hearts and all the tame, their bark and leaves and hooves and hair and bones, their final
cries, and our neighbors: so many particular, precious, irreplaceable lives that despite
ourselves we’re inhaling.

Warned
Sylvia Stults
The sands of time have rendered fear
Blue skies on high no longer clear
Stars were bright whence they came
Now dimmed, obscured, pollution’s haze

Crystal clear our waters gleamed
Fish abundant, rivers streamed
Ocean floors sandy white
Now littered, brown, pollution’s plight

Trees towered high above
Trunks baring professed love
Birds chirping from sites unseen
Gone, paper joined pollution’s team

One can’t blame pollution alone
As they say, you reap what you’ve sown
So let us plant a better seed
Tear out old roots, cultivate, weed

Protect what has been given for free
Our waters, skies, wildlife and trees
For once they’re gone, don’t you say
Consider yourself warned of that fatal day

Letter to Noah’s Wife
Maya Popa
You are never mentioned on Ararat
or elsewhere, but I know a woman’s hand
in salvation when I see it. Lately,
I’m torn between despair and ignorance.
I’m not a vegetarian, shop plastic,
use an air conditioner. Is this what happens
before it all goes fluvial? Do the selfish
grow self-conscious by the withering
begonias? Lately, I worry every black dress
will have to be worn to a funeral.
New York a bouillon, eroded filigree.
Anything but illness, I beg the plagues,
but shiny crows or nuclear rain.
Not a drop in London May through June.
I bask in the wilt by golden hour light.
Lately, only lately, it is late. Tucking
our families into the safeties of the past.
My children, will they exist by the time
it’s irreversible? Will they live
astonished at the thought of ice
not pulled from the mouth of a machine?
Which parent will be the one to break
the myth; the Arctic wasn’t Sisyphus’s
snowy hill. Noah’s wife, I am wringing
my hands not knowing how to know
and move forward. Was it you
who gathered flowers once the earth
had dried?
How did you explain the light
to all the animals?

Evening
Dorianne Laux
Moonlight pours down
without mercy, no matter
how many have perished
beneath the trees.

The river rolls on.

There will always be
silence, no matter
how long someone
has wept against
the side of a house,
bare forearms pressed
to the shingles.

Everything ends.
Even pain, even sorrow.

The swans drift on.

Reeds bear the weight
of their feathery heads.
Pebbles grow smaller,
smoother beneath night’s
rough currents. We walk

long distances, carting
our bags, our packages.
Burdens or gifts.

We know the land
is disappearing beneath
the sea, islands swallowed
like prehistoric fish.

We know we are doomed,
done for, damned, and still
the light reaches us, falls
on our shoulders even now,

even here where the moon is
hidden from us, even though
the stars are so far away.

Metallic Reefs
Sam Illingworth

Swaying steadily in
kaleidoscopic fields,
spectral fans reflect

the turquoise light;
their mottled aura

straining spectra as
warming oceans
bleach branches and

lighten latticework.
Parasitic hues scar the surface,
lacerating living skeletons
with vibrant, polished purples

their corrupting shadows
smeared across the ferns,
as copper-coloured paint
leaches from beneath a bow.

Artificial colours
permeate the seascape,
their irregular vitality
piercing faded defences

saturating oceans,
that rise without restraint.

…