Arts & Culture / Climate / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

Climate Catastrophes

Charles Frederick, Shawangunk Mushroom

Image Credit: Charles Frederick, Shawangunk Mushroom, (2013-2020). Courtesy of the artist.

the roses too/ bloomed red that year/ at the wrong time/ (far too early)/ a warning/ (which once again we refused to heed)/ thus against the fields of white frost,/ they were as though stigmata/ (breaking a holy flesh)/ earth signs, bloodletting/

animals at night/ injuring one another/ (my father said)/ in fights like lost warring angels/ (in rivalry at the end of time)/ for what was becoming scarce/ (so many needed things)/ these flowers/ were the spilled old goblets of decaying/ red gold ichor/ (and blood/ and just tears/

aging dense like wax for votive lamps/ for the newly dead)/ they attached to the branching arbor/ folding and crushing into one another/ as they spilled from the wounds/ of the mist-like creatures/ now taking off/ in (bewildered, wayward) final flight/ arrested/

by next morning/ the flowers flowed/ from one place of being/ into another, appearing/ as precise petals of ruby crystal/ sharp sheaves of adhering glass/ but as fragile as springtime ice/

when suddenly (simultaneously)/ breaking in a multiplying chaos of accidents/ (among shiny red/ Monte Carlo racing cars)/ they crashed and fell off cliffs/ petals dropping to the ground/ in crying, despairing crowds/

then they were gone/ leaving no mark of their ever having been/ the tree was bare, again,/ except for her thorns/ and the few fruit left/ not yet eaten/ by the hungry deer/

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