Only of man
“weather — what is weather — when it’s / all gone we’ll / buy more,” - Jorie Graham
technology, revolution, independence. Then,
the cycle of wet from rain, wet from earth spring
mocking our best efforts to build
a life. Brief control of wind — in
to the lungs and out again. Barely
more than a bagpipe. This
dim chance of a breath.
Overseas and somewhere the sky looks
the same. There, they are selling weather by the basketful,
degrees dropping through the wicker as dew finds dirt through
this trailing monstera lattice.
Only,
this weather we,
canopy by canopy.
— we could have known that birdsong haloed the earth
an auditory ring transposing
from hemisphere to hemisphere skydance with
morning rupture and new the desiring
churn of the foam lacing the beach —
There we were
lacking in every way but up.
Everything ashen from the last crawl of ember, a reminder
that climate is not a pledge, but a dependency. Fleeting, short-sighted —
at last the giants we were promised.
Our mind caverns with cosmos.
A pattern welcomes us into the deep foyer of being.
A Comanche man says if you want to build a clock,
think as seasons do.
I was at an AI Summit this week - lots of conversation about power and responsibility which is laced throughout this poem. I did meet a Comanche man at this event who said something akin to what I put in the poem. Profound. The image is of a big fig tree I saw in Santa Barbara, believed to be the largest in the nation! I was struck by the almost comical curb + two fences as protection. Not pictured is the roaring jackhammer.
In Seattle, we have an arena that has been recently renamed Climate Pledge Arena. It kinda makes me laugh, kinda makes me smile, kinda makes me sad. Most of all it reminds me that climate is an observed trend, not a promise.
I’m in a Jorie Graham moment. Her quote at the top is one of about a thousand that I could have pulled in and everything she writes and says rattles around in my brain for days. Her collection [To] The Last [Be] Human is a phenomenal account of the last 20 years of feeling and science. What a gift!
Thanks for reading.