After the Global Warming
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
—Robert Frost
Call it climate change if you like
it doesn’t alter the physics
of ocean or atmosphere.
The once slipstream flow
now turbulent: giant swirls of air
haunt our continents.
A deep depression
after the melting of the arctic
ice sheet, the rise of oceans.
Just yesterday it seems
politicians were tripping
all over their tongues
exhausting greenhouse gases
leaving sooty footprints
of lies, and inaction,
and I, half-listening, stroke
the bristles of my beard
which I now depend on.
I will save a few warm words
for you before my heart slips
into frigid air—this last ice age
the freezing of our existence
—to be entombed in glaciers.
I do not want to squander
the final moments of lucidness
on politics. We are all butterflies
perhaps not even knowing
what the mere flutter
of our wings has done.
The trip south, impossible,
New York already in tundra.
It may take me, but I will never
surrender to weather.
My breath, now steam;
my life, mere vapor.
I found a cave in the woods
the last bit of dry vines will burn
a little easier than green shoots.
Hypothermia is temporary,
soon we will feel nothing
but warmth that is in our hearts
and the regret.
While fire licks the icy air
come huddle with me, hide
in the comma of my back
and sleep.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll be
suspended
in our dreams.
John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His four poetry collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2021), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2022), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, Mannone lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
http://jcmannone.wordpress.com
https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
—Robert Frost
Call it climate change if you like
it doesn’t alter the physics
of ocean or atmosphere.
The once slipstream flow
now turbulent: giant swirls of air
haunt our continents.
A deep depression
after the melting of the arctic
ice sheet, the rise of oceans.
Just yesterday it seems
politicians were tripping
all over their tongues
exhausting greenhouse gases
leaving sooty footprints
of lies, and inaction,
and I, half-listening, stroke
the bristles of my beard
which I now depend on.
I will save a few warm words
for you before my heart slips
into frigid air—this last ice age
the freezing of our existence
—to be entombed in glaciers.
I do not want to squander
the final moments of lucidness
on politics. We are all butterflies
perhaps not even knowing
what the mere flutter
of our wings has done.
The trip south, impossible,
New York already in tundra.
It may take me, but I will never
surrender to weather.
My breath, now steam;
my life, mere vapor.
I found a cave in the woods
the last bit of dry vines will burn
a little easier than green shoots.
Hypothermia is temporary,
soon we will feel nothing
but warmth that is in our hearts
and the regret.
While fire licks the icy air
come huddle with me, hide
in the comma of my back
and sleep.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll be
suspended
in our dreams.
John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His four poetry collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2021), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2022), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, Mannone lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
http://jcmannone.wordpress.com
https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/
