If you’ve been keeping up with our projects or have read our past blog post, you’d know that recently we held a “walking poetry slam” as part of a larger group of over 50 rallies, hosted in partnership with People vs Fossil Fuels. These rallies are a part of the #EndtheEra campaign, which held a weekend on action between June 9th to 11th. They demand that Biden declare a federal climate emergency, ban fossil fuel leasing and drilling, and end the approval of all new fossil fuel projects. Groups across the country took advantage of the opportunity to #ActOnClimate in unique and powerful ways, hosting educational events, letter writing, public theater, public art, and demonstrations.

We wanted people to be able to see these poets’ works and read them, even after the event was over. So, we decided to post a couple of the poems here! Thank you to everyone who came, participated, and spoke at our poetry slam. Thank you to Andy, Eben, and Aviva for letting us post your work. 

Andy’s Poem

I rise and fall as the rain comes and goes

I clash against my partner, the ocean toe to toe

I support the little fish in the many pools with the tadpoles swimming in it.

I am our history

So many people live on me, so many people depend on me

I am the water you drink

So be proud

I am years and centuries of water

Steadily flowing, creating a path

So, drink me and apply my lessons to your life

I extend as far as the mountains of New Hampshire to the ocean off the shore

Your waste and pollution are in me

But that won’t stop me

I keep on flowing and I keep on growing

Because I have places to be and that is here.

Eben Bain – Exiting a Labyrinth

First published in Wild Roof Journal [@wildroofjournal on instagram, @ebenbein on instagram]

They are cheaters, you thought,

when maple seeds rode a gust

over its tiny walls. But you

were on the way in, then.

Now, you set your back

to the center. Now, there is no such thing

as achievement.

There is time to take steps,

for new grasses

to sprout between stones and how

did plants ever seem stationary

whole skittering their vessels

across the minutes?

No, you are the rooted one

or rather no longer soaring

along the arc

the straightaway revs no engine

the false dive toward the center

has lost its pull

and before time has run

the last corridor which is also the first

if for you the where

there are no walls

between anything

in fact you could skip

but for not wanting to miss

one moment with the ground

Aviva’s Poem

I miss the imperfections of a living world 

The sun 

And the wind 

As they pour through the curling veins of the earth 

And the infinite plains 

Where the blades come alive when god’s eye breaks the horizon 

And the woods 

Where rotting is not just decay but a new form of life 

But the straight edges of society leave no room for interwoven branches 

No room for the tomato seeds we planted 

No room for the wind as a whistling cantor 

Just straight edges 

Because we have mastered efficiency 

At the price of our humanity 

We forget that our nature is one of harmony 

We have separated 

From the world that cradled us 

Who taught us to walk, then run 

The unconditional love of the parent persists 

But the child has dismissed any attempt at reconciliation 

And this cycle of abuse seems unshakeable 

Who are we to break it? 

But if this is fixed, then something needs to be broken 

Our ancestors wrote in a time before perfection could be predicted 

But convenience is meaningless in the face of extinction

If we persist 

The torch that our ancestors handed to us 

Will smolder down to our fingertips 

Until there is nothing left to burn but the world 

We have forgotten to love her 

More than the fire that barely kept us warm 

I stand before you as not a figure of pain, but love 

For everything we have lost, but also for the future 

For the jagged spears of the shells on my cousin’s beach 

For the only place where I feel like I can truly breathe 

Love for the stream where I sat and wept 

Until my eyes were as dry as the riverbed 

For the future we must face 

For humanity 

Creatures of the earth 

Not evil 

Just lost their way 

For the organic beauty of endless, imperfect variation 

A messy, damaged, living earth 

That is what I am fighting for