Tag: poems about climate change

Categories
Memoir National Poetry Month Nature Poetry Writing

Some Days I Just Want the Jiffy Corn Muffin

Taking center stage in the felt and fiber exhibit
was a shrouded human-size figure,
death wrapped in yellow
— the color of butter and bees —
but called Chrysalis to imply resilience

resilience in the face of everything

OMG, the everything we face sometimes feels like death —
its foul smell invading even the simple pleasures

it’s hard to ignore the crises in woods that are dying
it’s hard to ignore the crises in the violence of a Sunday drive
it’s hard to ignore the crises when even my favorite characters are battling hate and headlines

every thing of the injustice

I long for the days when my favorite characters could just fall off ferry boats and have sex in on-call rooms.

When their soundtrack was mine on a Sunday drive that didn’t require white knuckles and a prayer.

When the woods were lush and fertile, the promise of the butterfly born from the Chrysalis, color and light and HOPE.

It makes you want to lie down, wrap covers around your tired body, and sleep a deep and dreamless sleep,

because these days even the dreams are pockmarked and ravaged

and you wake gasping for breath, the bile of it all burning your throat,

a burn that nothing will assuage…except the last Jiffy corn muffin
dripping with butter and drizzled with honey,

a final gift from the bees, who swoop and swarm en masse, before leaving for good.


Poem ©2023, Jen Payne. An ekphrastic poem contemplating the juxtaposition of Chrysalis Shroud for LGBTQ: Allies Supporting Resilience by Annie Collier and Kim Hahn, and Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix by LeBrie Rich in the national exhibition FELT: Fiber Transformed that was on view at the Guilford Art Center, March-April 2023. Photos by Ashley Seneco.

If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif

Categories
Memoir National Poetry Month Nature Poetry Writing

Finding Exile

Preparing herself for the inevitable,
the sandpiper —
usually found along the coast
makes her home now
by a small pond in the woods
three miles from shore.
It’s quiet here, most days,
except when the wind
carries clamor from the south,
and she’s been welcomed
graciously
by the turtles and frogs,
the heron and wood ducks.
They’ve come here, too,
this protected space
with ample shade and shallows
to share with anyone who needs
asylum from the rising conflict.
You might say we are refugees,
displaced from the familiar
by forces not of our making
finding exile here,
making life despite the storm,
saying grace for the bounty


Photo & poem ©2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif

Categories
Poetry Writing

Our Sad Riddle

Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.

My nephew, fresh from the pages of Tolkien,
sees a fish carcass on the beach,
predicts Gollum! though we both wonder.
He considers the waves left from a storm,
the wind that blows us each askew,
thinks with furrowed brow, like me
as I sift through those things I know:
the trespass of raw sewage
and slick film of leached oil,
the change of warming waters,
our persistent lack of rain.
But he’s off on a new adventure now,
throwing boulders with grunts and gasps,
Take that! he yells, a holler into the wind
as loud as mine would be if allowed
to grieve the things he cannot see.

Poem ©2020, Jen Payne. One of the riddles of Bilbo and Gollum in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.