Amid the Climate Crisis, I Address My Twins, at a Year Old
Found poem after The Log from the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck
Good Friday. No wind
Blows in the trees. The Stations
Of the Cross wait so long for us.
Shallow draft, black
Shawls, the cornered water’s edge
All welded into
One thing. Remember
The tide flats? Red snapper, sand
Anemones, sea fans? Fierce
Burst of barnacles
Imbedded in the bottom
Of the wrecked boat…
Scavenge, you half-hungry.
Stroll slowly, ragged urchins,
So little
Has been disappeared
Entirely. A feeling
Foreign, a frightened fervency
Cured in the gallant
Growth of mangrove, most ancient
Trick in the book.
Remember when we bought only what
We needed. You
Don’t. Remember a kind
Of hush. Hush,
Disease and sorrow.
Hush, communicants of harpoon
Flesh. The foul smell
Of a bound mob
Burrows in the black mud
Below the dreadful
Experiment, the slender,
Curved teeth of bloody Christ.
Christopher R. Vaughan is a teacher and poet based in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Review Americana, Canyon Voices, Del Sol Review, Connecticut River Review, and What Rough Beast.