Smoke arrived late this year, giving
the Douglas firs a reprieve,
letting the squirrels ravage
their cones. The eagle’s nests stayed
whole while nitrogen passed
like holy wine
through fir tree roots to red alders
and back in mutual infusion.
Neither our once famous rain,
nor a benevolent god kept
scorching fires at bay.
Ah Nature, you trickster,
I am a gullible novice: blind
mole to the web
of complexity, forgetting
the many years of drought,
the yellow jackets swarming
last August, thirsty.
And though I flew
from France over the glaciers
of Iceland and Mt. Rainier
to reach my lover—every sheet
and floe receding—
my weeping brought nothing
to our melting planet.
Yet it’s the salt,
the slick
and thrum and heat
of bodies that keeps
our channels open.
This poem also appears in the July 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 7, page 49). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
