grace can move so slow it’s sleeping / and move so slow it’s dead, and then / open all the windows, let rain in, and / startled, up it wakes.
climate poetry by Leah Bobet
Originally published in Canthius 11, January 2023.
all the seeds I swallowed that spring
from the mouths of martens and rivers,
each one contained: a snatch of light
off January rain, a hawk stooped in the
alley, silent movies shifting on the sheet
hung from your third-floor window, the
tomatoes we planted at Solstice moon
out back of Wychwood Barns.
grace can move so slow it’s sleeping
and move so slow it’s dead, and then
open all the windows, let rain in, and
startled, up it wakes.
look, she said,
it seems I’ve been carrying
this whole city in my pocket
for some years now,
and if the weather’s right
and the wind from the east
I’ll plant the thing again:
gently dismantle every broken shell
that sprawled across it since and
rebuild our nests in good red brick,
gather the brush-tailed poets home
to fight and fuck and sing park songs.
just you watch and just you wait
I carried them in my belly this far, this
long, this hard, waiting for the crack of ice
breaking along the buried rivers; the heave of
unloved asphalt to show a patch of fertile ground.