Contented Frogs

Jan 19 2015

Some frogs do jump
as the water is brought to a boil.
But most grow somnolent
in the slowly warming bath,
squat green bodies
simmering on their pads.

To be alarmist, or apathetic
as the greenhouse steams up?
As oceans grow acid
diversity dies?
As croplands wither
and water goes higher?
As a brilliant planet
is no longer resilient
enough to survive?

But if there's nowhere left to land
why jump from the pan
into the fire?
And when the blanket of gas
has already been trapped
hasn't inertia
already fried us?
Have the feedback effects
of permafrost thaw, and loss of albido
made it futile to set
enforceable limits?

Especially when we have our precious stuff, our small ambitions,
our presumption that things
will stay much as the present.
When even now, in our daily struggles
we can barely keep heads
from going under?

Every day
a tiny bit hotter
craning our necks
in the rising water.

So we all agree

to stay a bit longer,

enjoy the unseasonable warmth. 

Contented frogs

wallowing in our waste,
trusting in God
to keep us safe.



I feel so much despair and futility at the state of the planet, so much anger at our politicians and ostensible leaders, so much revulsion at our culture's materialism, smugness, and short-sightedness, that I've pretty much given-in to my innate nihilism: I’ve become an unhappily sitting frog.

The ultimate despair was hearing Senator Inhoff (I think that’s the name) -- who, unbelievably, is the new chair of the Senate committee that oversees science (a Republican and a Christian fundamentalist, of course!) -- quoted to the effect the global warming can't be happening because he doesn't believe God would ever permit anything to harm His creation or the creatures he made in His image. (I'm still not sure if it's out of respect, or out of sneering contempt, that I capitalized the pronouns.) What superstitious nonsense! What abysmal ignorance! What frightening fatalism! What uneducated, unimaginative, and utterly childish literalism! If this is one the critical leaders of "the indispensable nation", then all is truly lost.

I very much dislike writing poetry like this. Climate change is, like most things political and scientific, much better explored in essay, article, and debate. Written as gentle allegory, poetry can convey the emotional truths of these topics powerfully. But when it veers into advocacy and polemics, I can see eyes glazing over. So there is a temptation to just leave this poem at the frogs, and let the reader make the (too obvious?) connection.

Except that I feel too strongly -- have been bottling up my frustration too long, writing poems about trivial stuff while avoiding the only truly defining subject of our time -- to leave it at that. Because while we debate about the actual existence (unbelievable!) of climate change (or whether it's man-made, which is just as absurd a debate), dither about solutions, wait for someone else to act, and generally lack the imagination and distance to question the ridiculous presumptions of our economic and social system (cancerous growth, rampant consumerism, the blinkered focus on GNP, corrosive inequality, and free externalities that should drive a conservative market economist mad ...I could go on!), climate change has already won: how can I not talk about the atmospheric inertia from the greenhouse gases already there; how can I not talk about the exponential positive feedback effects of methane release from thawing permafrost, from the loss of albido due to melting polar ice? Our civilization is over; but we dance on, while the city burns. (Reading back, I realize that this paragraph contains what must be the longest sentence I've ever written. Hope you were able to stay with me to the end!)

I've repeatedly said that I think my natural medium is the essay, not verse; and that I take on poetry as much out of the challenge of doing something hard as out of the pleasure I take in language. So perhaps it would be best to see a rare political poem like this as an added challenge: that is, the challenge of expressing complicated ideas and of saying more than I should without entirely losing the reader.