You step out into the yard, feel the heat’s weight descend on you. The grass is warm, dry between your toes. You think about how the only way for an individual to escape the effects of climate change is to add to it — a never-ending cycle that you may not live to see humanity escape. You check the weather app every five minutes to see if all of this is even real. You try to read a book on the couch, feel the heat seep in through a gap in the caulking of the window, fight the temptation to sleep. You try to think about cold things, because it worked for Gus in that one episode of Recess you watched as a kid; it does not work for you here. You imagine what you would do if the power went out, whether you would secure what cold you’ve collected inside, run away, or just lie down and wait for the sun to consume you. Ninety-three degrees in your apartment at 10 pm. You scramble to turn on and adjust every fan inside. You cannot find any air.
Tag: Nature
On a bench by a pond
Something about wet two-by-fours feels like home. Xe sits on a bench, wet from morning dew and mist, on a boardwalk overlooking a pond. Two mallards paddle in front of xem— a slow game of tag or awkward flirting, xe isn’t sure. Soft croaks from red-legged frogs emanate from the kinnikinnik covering the ground. Xe could breathe here.
Frost and Shadow
The frozen dew of February stands in the shadow of towering firs. The sun rises slowly in the southern clouds, and shadows recede. An edge of bright frost curves with the shadow along the shoulder of Kersey Way, not realizing it was time to go.
A Note Should Suffice
There’s a tower out on the horizon.
You’ve lived in this forest a long time. So long, in fact, that you’ve started to name the trees— not the species names, like spruce, cedar, hemlock; those you learned on your grandpa’s nature walks years ago— names like Rela, Sophia, Brett.
The black face of the tower is stark in contrast to the orange-green hue of the treetops across the valley in the morning light. Its top half is coiled like a serpent around a shaman’s forearm, coming to three sharp points a hundred feet above the western red cedars at the base of the mountain.
The tower wasn’t there yesterday. You’re almost certain. You don’t remember a tower living there— isn’t that where Storm River started? At the base of Thunder Falls? The face of the glacier still sunbathes on the mountain. It must still drift there. You don’t remember the last time you really paid attention to that area. You don’t remember the names of those trees, if the trees are still there.
You strain your eyes, grasping at the finer details just out of reach. Soft, faint, purple cyphers flow along the tower’s coils, glowing in a slow pulse that climbs up the snake’s spine.
The colors of the treetops by the tower are washed out. The leaves and pine needles pale, white as day-old coals. The bark’s black as night. No life there, no movement. You could almost feel the absence of the grubs that crawled within the folds of the bark.
It’s cold, as mornings here tend to be. The sun, contrary to what city people say, is not a morning person; it takes its time stumbling over the mountain. You’re halfway through your earl grey, meaning you’re toward the end of the hour between dawn and when the sun is actually visible.
Your porch is quiet in a loud way. The quiet has a presence, and it demands to be known. One morning, about a week ago, a crow landed on a maple branch on the northeast corner of your front yard. It cawed, then froze and, you swear, lowered its head apologetically before flying away.
You finish your tea, then pack several days of supplies in your backpack. Your partner is still asleep. Not wanting to wake them, you leave a note on the counter saying what you’re doing, where you’re going, when to worry.
trees in maryland
mid april after a cold snap their trunks twisted agony branches desperately reach a merciless blue sky amber leaves on cold earth
who cooks for you? who cooks for you-all?
old north wind rattles leaves from their stems grey feathers line my jaw and ears who cooks for you? who cooks for you-all? full moon rises my talons itch i call out to the shadows only hear echos who cooks for you? who cooks for you-all? a splash near the riverbed a bob of an alder branch a twitch in the undergrowth a corpse by the highway who cooks for you? who cooks for you-all?
About the Future
Sometimes, when you think of the future, you see all the branches— all the if-thens— trunk to branch to stem. Sometimes, when you think of the future, all the branches look barren— no fruit or flower or leaf. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways, you breech the outer bark, prune branches. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways— if you squint— on the edge of the smallest lateral, a bud blooms.
Zugg’s Song
the road is long horizon o’er horizon the past is here constantly dying the flowers grow in soil dry and rancid the future’s gone murky, cannot grasp it these walls, these caves contain the moments that have made us flow in, flow out like air these moments can suffocate us if we let them if we let them
This poem is part of a collection called Shards of Kardpaz, which are texts I’ve written for the world of the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns I run with students at my school.
You burn your face
You fall asleep on a beach. You know as soon as you wake up; around your eyes, dead skin screams like children at a playground. You spend several days watching wallpaper peel, cedar shingles flake. Cracks in the facade spread like wildfire, expose raw wood that’s never seen the harmful light of day. You pick at it after telling yourself not to. Oils in your fingers cause a pimple by the corner of your mouth like a bullet’s indentation in a street sign. You see it in the bathroom mirror as you wash your hands. Twenty seconds with a stranger. Another in the surface of the medicine cabinet.
the spring we lost
i remember
the morning the order came that said
we had to stay at home.
snow dusted the streets, coated the soccer field of my school
a week before the equinox.
my coworkers gathered around a computer to hear the governor say
our schools would close,
we would learn at a distance.
i remember
the morning i set up a workspace in our apartment.
each of my computers started updating—
spiraling dots, loading bars, flickering numbers.
stuck sitting and waiting as
the sun rose through the blinds,
spruce leaves swayed in the wind.
i remember
an afternoon— maybe multiple— where i laid on the couch,
papers to grade scattered on the coffee table.
i turned away from them and watched
warm light come in though the sliding glass door,
flowers bloom in the planters across the alley.
i remember
the afternoon where i forgot what day it was
after marking the day off the calendar in our kitchen,
after checking my phone multiple times to make sure, even
after saying it out loud.
maybe time is one of those human constructs that only exists insofar as it is useful.
matte grey sky gives way to patches of blue.
crows peck at the garbage bag sticking out of our neighbor’s overstuffed bin.
squirrels jump between the thin pine trunks outside the window by our mantle.
M. Espinosa 