From:Holocene

                                   Meaghan Hurr         

 

Monarch

A great migration,

vibrant orange wings flapping,

like tiny turbines.

Losing energy with time,

searching for food they won’t find.

 

 

President Trump proposed significant budget cuts to the government agencies responsible for overseeing the nation’s energy and environmental policies, including a 31 percent reduction in spending at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The New World

Land of the greed,

Home of the endangered.

Regulate our wallets,

leave the water unchecked,

guzzle fresh fertilizer and digest pest poison.

 

Floods and fire swallowing us,

meaningless because it still snows.

Starve the pests and their predators,

by tearing and mowing and spraying,

a perfect trim to keep the life away.

 

Grow crops and grow cows to feed the world,

throw it away before it can.

Destroy the soil to feed the world,

and move on when it is ruined.

Drive or fly whenever you please,

the land of the free implores you to.

A supreme quality of life on the surface,

gives way to a crumbling world.

 

 

Coal

I am laid bare,

previously laden with life.

Men would delve in my depths,

extracting their prize with great risk.

They won’t endanger themselves any longer,

deciding to destroy me instead.

Lumbering metal monsters sent with explosives,

to blow away my livelihood.

My peak taken from me,

my greenery blown to dust.

Homes stolen from wildlife,

and from the men themselves.

Trapped in their poverty,

as the machines steal occupations.

Avalanche of dust to descend on those below,

breathe it deeply and suffocate,

Lungs rot to black,

just as my precipice does.

 

 

The Bush administration’s repeal a Clinton-era policy that banned road construction in nearly 60 million acres of wilderness will likely increase the ‘human footprint’ on pristine wildlands in the United States.

Barren

A legislative minefield,

carefully planted by those with no care,

for the lush land that was stolen.

Purposing to advance dollars,

proposing to dismiss life.

 

The sage grouse knows no danger,

as one side pleads: to give the bird a chance,

and the other scoffs at protection of that which isn’t human.

 

Calls for the repeal of the Roadless Rule,

which stood as guardian to wilderness,

so the most intelligent of animals,

can exploit, extract, and destroy.

 

They undermine clean water,

to be more favorable to commercial interests.

There can be no interests,

in a world devoid of life.