Poems by Charles Entrekin

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Climate Change: Drought

by Charles Entrekin

From Canary Winter 2010-11

Charles lives in the San Pablo Bay Watershed which is within the greater San Francisco Bay Watershed.

Recorded by sound technicians at ultra high frequencies:
The cacophony came from a tree besieged by drought
--and from a frenzy of tree-invading beetles.

Science News, 8/30/08

 

The sounds are ultrasonic,
small implosions,
sounds of a pinon pine dying.

Wood-boring bark beetles
can hear it,
this popping of cells,
liquid transporting cells,
imploding,
this gasping of trees
dying
of moisture loss.

No defensive resin,
no way to pitch them out.

Arriving on the desert wind
the air fills with ultrasonic chirps,
the sound of beetles
the size of match heads
chewing their way in.




The Fish Found in Her Dream

by Charles Entrekin

From Canary Spring 2016

           The bird, dark and mean, crosses the creek,
lands on the prow of an old boat.
Her feathers turn purple in the sun.
Her call falls like a stone.
           I wish it were not so,
but this is how we meet.
When the bird calls, I always come.
I feel her dark joy congealing like blood,
her dreams changing my arms into wings.
I glide with her, alive.
I dive and devour
what shines beneath her in the stream.
           But no sooner does she come
than she’s gone,
leaving the taste of her gift
dying in my throat.
I am left empty,
the place where she dreams.




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