SMALL POEM ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The ocean is bored; every day the same old wave
after wave after wave.  Seagulls, egrets, double-
crested cormorants; ho hum.  And then an osprey
glides by, fish in his talons, predictable as
that Amazon truck coming down my street.
The sky flaps out overhead, a rumpled top sheet.  
The sun, tired of shining, dumps its bucket of light 
on the sand, blah, blah, blah.  

When temperatures soar sky-high
and stay that way, when we can no longer be
outside in summer, will we remember this?
What will we give to turn back the clock,
reverse the tide, reset the default setting
to ordinary once again?

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Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024). Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature. www.barbaracrooker.com