Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

There are mornings I wake
and wonder, why? Later, wandering
the walkways, in search
of something to fill the hole
in me . . .

— Krista Franklin / “Everyday around the world a woman is pulled into blue”

The planet’s coral reefs, home to a quarter of all marine species, are in the middle of a planet-wide global heating crisis . . . About 90% of the extra heat that humans are trapping around the planet – mostly by burning fossil fuels – is taken up by the oceans. Nowhere is that white heat more visible than across the planet’s coral reefs.

— Graham Readfearn / “Thanks to rising ocean heat, the Great Barrier Reef is becoming a ‘graveyard’” / Down to Earth, The Guardian

Steadfast and awful, my tall father / Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave / marks.

— Jericho Brown / “Duplex”

Atmospheric ‘rivers’ – ribbons of moist air that are typically about 2,000km long – will become more common as the planet continues to heat up. These will play a big part in flooding, bringing days of extreme rainfall without respite, saturating the ground and filling river systems to bursting . . . When you also consider the growing threat of serious wildfires and increased coastal flooding due to storm surges pumped up by rising sea levels, the overall picture becomes pretty grim.

— Bill McGuire / 46C SUMMER DAYS AND ‘SUPERCELL’ STORMS ARE BRITAIN’S FUTURE – AND NOW IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO PREPARE / Cool Earth, Substack

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain . . .

— Ada Limón / “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”

“The longer we keep emitting greenhouse gases, the more this pollution builds up in the atmosphere, and the more climate heating it causes. It’s a process that effectively locks in warmer temperatures on our planet for thousands of years to come. The only solution is to stop polluting as quickly (and as safely and equitably) as possible.”

— Dr. Jonathan Foley / “Can Tech Save Us From Climate Change?” / BBC Science Focus

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver / “The Summer Day”

What I’m Listening To:

She thumbed the galleon Cacafuego
Forsook the eyebrows climbing
Into greasy black hairlines

— Scott Walker / “Epizootics!”