The Harmony of Wounded Skies

A sestina poem about the many faces of nature amidst climate change

Did you hear her cry out amongst the battering of wounded clouds? those elongated days buried like tepid hearts reaching across oceans with souls vast to wonder if a crab’s shadow on coral reefs inscribed poetry from coral polyps in mourning

and in the eons that await in dire violet mornings we, too, will find our place now inside-out among the blackened spires, asphalt rooted reefs tentacles reaching out in acid-bitten hearts from plastic and soda-can stuffed dens, in vast we cough out lungs of carbon-filled ash clouds

Do you feel the crashing waves on lighthouse reefs? Cuttlefish dreaming of reality in Gaia’s tempered hearts in time’s mountains reaching up to smoke-filled clouds as a widow lays down a bridge hand in shaken mourning for truth-filled minds that perilously spit out photon-rays carelessly through ozone holes ever vast

Yet, twas only yesterday when the world seemed so vast instead now only a tiny pebble cast among bleached reefs as ocean fauna reach with Darwinian plight far out into the godless waves, that bruise our weeping hearts as alloy forests reign atop volcanic clouds in dire mourning huddled together, telling creation stories in the clouds

For I remember in my wild days, I moved like stormclouds unbeknownst to the bird or ant, ecosystems fragile and vast for as they tumbled and fell, weeping heart, forever mourning the loss of gods and green lands, turtle grass in withered reefs to toss the final stone at the last fish with the might of heart that we were the final shadow and candlelight, now blown out

to the clouds passing by like fading ghosts of coral reefs afloat in a hellish sea so vast, to forget those longing hearts that sleep soundly in a world now out of time to mourn

a final sunset and harmony of wounded skies, now vast.

© Bradley J Nordell 2020

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