Poems by Janet McMillan Rives
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Climate Anxiety
by Janet McMillan Rives
Janet lives in the Big Wash Watershed in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona where she shares her tiny yard with Gila woodpeckers, vermilion flycatchers, lizards, and an occasional bobcat.
On an almost perfect Sunday,
December on the desert,
I bring my laptop to the patio to read
a magazine article about the loss
of our environment, how we recognize
the problem but take no action.
I try to concentrate on climate
anxiety, a topic the author says
has grown past rational argument,
but all I can think of is how soft
the dog's fur feels under my hand,
how the breeze riffles my hair,
how baby nasturtiums push above
the soil in the blue pot holding a newly
planted orange gazania, how the pink
salvia will perfume my fingers
when I set down my laptop, walk over,
run my hand through the tiny leaves.
© Janet McMillan Rives
Erosion
by Janet McMillan Rives
From Canary Spring 2022
We are worn away.
We are diminished.
We've lost our edge
our sharp witty banter,
misplaced a facility to mingle.
Like shoreline cliffs
we collapse, tumble
into the ocean below.
We avoid lows and highs,
allow the wind to level us
like flattened sea dunes.
At the river's edge
our roots cling to rocks
exposed by surging water.
Where has it drifted
the silt of our lost days?
Where has it settled?
© Janet McMillan Rives
Gifts
by Janet McMillan Rives
From Canary Spring 2022
From a distance I see a flowered
clock like the one I happened upon
in Nantes during a wait between trains
a clock in reds and yellows
petunias and marigolds.
But this isn’t a flowered clock at all
but bright plastic bags filled with sand
layered along a levee
keeping surging water from our town.
Hundreds of helpers, maybe thousands,
worked into the night filling, tying,
passing, piling vivid bags at river’s edge.
It worked. Our gift to us.
Yet now we gaze across the river
at houses up to their eaves in water.
We see the river wreak its havoc
on downstream cities
making million-dollar messes
for others to clean up.
Our gift to them.
© Janet McMillan Rives