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White heron flying ver red koi

One Poem by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

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Love in a Time of Chaos

for O; after Craig Santos Perez
 

If only I could build you a home they cannot
        wreck.      Somewhere
among baobab trees, part their leaves gently
        like a lover’s breath

behind the ear.     I want to love you where
        I’m certain the sun
will reach.    A place clean       & chlorophyll
        green.     In the city

we once kissed, all the water is starting to stain.      
        Propane.     Gasoline.      
Industrial sewage & atrazine from pesticide
        sprays.      I walk to

Isimmiri, hoping to sit there on the shore
        the way we did
when we were small—just sitting there—while
        the herons ate up

the fishes.     How we never tried to fend them off.
         All of us clueless,
as kids are, when they know nothing yet about
         harm.   Now the fishes

are poisoned & with that, the birds are gone.    
         Everything is happening
fast.    First it was the news    about endangerment
        of kākāpōs & honeybees.   

Then another of how the rise in sea level is sinking
        Tubalu.      My god.
Wreckage is such a foreign phrase until you look
        out your window

& find it there.      Do you still remember my first
        attempt at swimming?
You said, If you slip I’ll catch you.      As if I was
        a stalk & you the root.

As if     like Moses     you’d split a river just for me.
        I want to love
you in that vastness between the heron & the fish,
        between      the pollutant    

& the gills.         In a world we both know is hurting.

 

 

This is the tenth of 11 contributions to the Climate Stories in Action series, in partnership with the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. The series runs from late May through early August 2024.

 

Chiwenite OnyekweluChiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, is forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks (2024). His poems appear in Cincinnati Review, Adroit Journal, Hudson Review, ONLY POEMS, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. He won the Hudson Review Inaugural Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Isele Magazine Poetry Prize.

Read “Breaking News,” a poem by Chiwenite Onyekwelu also appearing in Terrain.org.

Header photo by oceanfishing, courtesy Shutterstock.