Anthropocenic
: when the nearest light is miles away yet
and adorned on the night is a lightning bug
as in a jarred cactus plant
an open book without commas
: when the only thing you can touch is a plastic raft
and drenched between the hours is a cutting board
as in a place for garlic
and onions the face of early sky
: when water undresses into tar sands
and to one long tune acacia trees dance some
as in alder reach
anything is worth the rain
: when above more and more narrow miracles
and answers set to stone by a single hand
as in a chorus of them
any shadow still means light
Copyright © 2023 by Jake Skeets. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 17, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I was cutting garlic and onions for dinner and noticed how white the sky seemed through the small window in my kitchen during yet another wildfire. That image became the poem’s first layer, and from there I explored different ideas and terms about climate change, each with its own definition. I found them all trying to translate the same experience: existing in a dying world. So the poem’s use of the colon is informed by those attempts at defining and translating the looking that we do through small windows and the way we encounter our vulnerability over and over again.”
—Jake Skeets
Jake Skeets
Jake Skeets’s debut collection, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed, 2019), was selected by Kathy Fagan for the 2018 National Poetry Series.