Sarah Germain Lilly

Villanelle for Climate Crisis

Here is too much rain, there forests burn.
The self watering planter is drowning.
Gray sky of grief, the losses that will never return.

Mosquitoes blossom, hungry from the cistern,
Dragonflies dine their fill.
Here is too much rain, there forests burn.

Tomatoes are hard, green as ferns.
Eggplants are swelling and long.
Gray Sky of grief, the losses that will never return.

Children or grandchildren, how will we learn
That we must give the unearned gift?
Here is too much rain, there forests burn.

Condo dream collapses as waves churn,
Waking to nightmare, each species swept along.
Gray sky of grief, the losses that will never return.

Generations lost to stardust must surrender,
Elusive glory of society’s plunder.
Here is too much rain, there forests burn.
Gray sky of grief, the losses that will never return.

3/27/2021 Sonnet for a Pandemic Spring

Winter melted to reveal the budding,
Golden forsythia in the sunshine.
Purple crocus, throaty cardinals sing,
Spring clouds against deep blue, of rain no sign.

Broken by pandemic, safety battered,
Corruption is king, a Capitol riot.
New election voting records shattered,
Brings a kind of calm and sober quiet.

Seven o’clock banging for the children,
Earth and her people broken so deeply.
Eighteen names added to half a million,
The meaning of a life taken cheaply.

The tender seedling breaking through the earth,
As labor pains deliver our rebirth.