Exceptional The unsettling feeling of climate change Totems Parts III and IV by estory

III   Years past the monarch butterflies  Arrived in my yard like clockwork, Browsing my butterfly bushes Along their ancient migrations, But I haven't seen them for years and years.   October nights I'd stand outside the house Listening for the tell tale flight of the geese And I'd know we could count on the first frost Not long after. But the nights are quiet now.   One year we watched a storm Claim a beach. Next year It was an island, With all of its houses and churches, Its landmarks and lighthouses.   John Muir once called the world 'The scripture of nature.' Now that sounds like a fading refrain Echoing in the Permian basin, Or the epitaph of the Colorado Scribbled on the Hoover Dam.      IV   All around us we see the scattered bones Of what this place used to be,   The glory of its innocent perfection, Enshrined in fossils and skeletons   Labeled on the museum shelves. And the dust of what is to come.  Author Notes These are the last two parts to my poem on climate change, Totems. Here I wanted to use imagery to illustrate and capture this unsettling feeling that change brings to us, this feeling of being insecure on our own feet. Changing shorelines. Familiar structures like lighthouses falling into the sea. Familiar episodes like the coming of the butterflies that seem to be fading away. Most of these images stuck in my mind after hurricane Sandy destroyed Long Island and many familiar trees and buildings disappeared. We have to be careful about how we manage our world. Things like dams destroy rivers, upsetting the delicate balances of nature. If we really want to live in harmony with nature, we have to live naturally, without man made things. Or the result might be the dust of what is to come. estory

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