This Month's Featured Poem

Called by Clouds, by M. Bardet

Earth Day, April 21, 2011, Benicia California

In these times, entertaining Gaia’s fate
    in billowing tasteless, invisible
       parts per million,

when carbon’s gases shape
    our clouded limits
       without escape

and glaciers shrink
    from highest peaks,
       and from the most remote dominion

The ice recedes, rapidly
   as in warming eons—
      that lost past

when crocodiles roamed
   hinterlands of “Colorado”
      and an inland sea

left its swirls etched
   on worn down edges
      of Aquarius Plateau—I

will not be done
    of the coal-thickened
       lining of a cloud,

or the particular matter,
    petroleum coke dust 
      and car’s exhaust

blown onto a
    window sill
       day in, day out

inking the white paint,
    coating the porch rails,
       the wind no ally;

yet, called by clouds
    of April’s spring, is it
       you and I

taken up upon
    their voluminous surfaces
       to comment?

Like weeds sprung above
    a weed barrier
       laid down with expectation

of relief from labors,
    questions open up
       that have no other

answer than a bud
    left to imagination
       or a furtive look

of eyes’ avoidance
    when another’s fix
       on cosmic reparations.