Scott T. Starbuck
Near Paisley, Oregon
- the ancient lake’s giant
- redband trout
- fin small creeks.
- Among swirling
- ice sculptures
- in thawing Chewaucan River,
- I daydreamed their lateral lines
- as one long red sunset
- after a bad storm,
- Buddhist monks
- pushing children
- on swings.
Punchbowl Hike Meditation
- For 30 years
- I’ve talked to myself
- about climate change
- but now everyone is.
- When you think that long
- you feel for individuals —
- Nina in flower garden,
- sparrow on fence.
Geo-Poem
- 66 million years ago in the Cenozoic era
- seawater filled these valleys
- with bass hovering like piñatas unaware
- of wagon trains, cattle ranches, asphalt roads,
- signs to Fort Rock and Christmas Valley
- just around the pluvial corner.
- Instead, bass knew only the language
- of hunger, sex, territory, blankly staring
- like men today watching TV.
Scott T. Starbuck, co-creative writing coordinator at San Diego Mesa College, has a new book of climate-change poems, Industrial Oz: Ecopoems. Starbuck read poems from it to over 500 climate activists at a December 12 Rally for Climate Justice in Balboa Park.