Poems by Paula Colangelo

Imperiled

Humanity has only 100 years left to leave Earth or perish,
Stephen Hawking believed.
– the inquirer.net

by Paula Colangelo

From Canary Summer 2022

Not far from where Paula currently lives in the Lake Worth Inlet watershed, blue herons forage when waters are calm. Some days, at high tide, ocean meets seawall and the intercoastal splashes on sidewalks and submerges small docks.

Missiles plunge into dead water,
practicing. Children taunt children.
Students hunted in school corridors

cloak themselves in silence.
Over and over again—black
skin pressed to pavement.

People flee from cars driven
into crowds. Blood letting out
onto asphalt mirrors ancestral

suffering—generations shackled,
native land usurped, naked masses
showered with gas. A prisoner

is beaten behind doors. Gradually
we die by our own hand. Witness
the eyes of the malnourished—

the same eyes staring from photographs
taken decades ago. Today’s starving
line sidewalks, fill classrooms,

live in cars. Water rises
into cities. Less than a century
before we drown, arms pinned

at our sides, the only music,
a tympani of loss.
Earth, our old love, watches.