Dark clouds gather over the desert
but they refuse to rain.
Men plot how to save the nation
with violence and lies.
The gathering storm moves on
leaving the western fires to burn.
When the rain comes anywhere,
it is too much. People drown
in hope against a fear of something
that does not exist.
How do so many fear a lie?
I want to be more hopeful
but doom gathers everywhere we look.
A hurricane comes in from the sea.
A tornado drops out of the sky.
The water rises up at the shore
and floods the great city.
Fire marches down the mountainside.
Fields dry up and the ground cracks.
Everyone is busy going to work
thinking there is no other way to survive.
They are right. And still,
we will not survive.
We all know the doom that is coming.
Even the deniers know.
People say: Stop burning the oil.
Stop burning the coal.
But we don’t know another way to live.
When it is below freezing outside
can you live without heat?
How will you get to work
without fuel for the car?
How will the grocery store shelves
be filled if trucks cannot deliver?
How will you see without lights?
How will you cook without a stove?
How will you travel without a car?
No one answers these questions.
We cannot shrink our way out.
Billions of people say:
“One more day… one more day.”
So the parade carries on,
and all storms gather.
2
Some challenges are obvious.
When the bear rises onto her back legs
one knows it is time to flee.
When wildfire approaches over the ridge,
the wise man leaves.
But what is this?
We are told “two degrees”
and hell will break loose.
The eye cannot see it;
the heart cannot feel it.
The mind holds the abstraction,
and then it asks:
“What does it mean
and where should we go?”
One more day…
But here is what we can see.
We can see the man
lying in the shade
sweating profusely,
the man who cannot cool himself,
the man who will die of heat.
We can see the grasses
lean away from the sun.
We can see the fish
and the corals turning white,
and we can see the swimmers
in a lake that was once too cold to swim.
We felt the warmth in April
and thought it was pleasant,
but that heat now bakes our brothers
and sisters…
And all I hear
is the all too human
rallying cry:
One more day… one more day…
3
The parade carries on
yet we cannot sit here
in the luxury of despair.
The answer to doom is creativity.
The answer to paralysis is action.
We must not drown in hopelessness.
We must not indulge the false hope
that diet is everything,
that lifestyle is a solution,
or that carbon footprint
can even be measured.
We cannot get lost in the navel-gazing hubris
of personal impact.
Yes, make your changes,
but never think it is enough.
Why do we believe we do not matter?
Does the robin build its nest
with less than what is needed?
Does the eagle survive
by believing it is irrelevant?
When an evil system rose in Germany,
everyone found a role.
Be the engineer who fixes the grid.
Be the marketer who gets EVs to everyone.
Be the salesman convincing everyone
to install solar.
Be the political leader
who forces carbon pricing into reality.
Reach for the impact
only you can have.
We all must contribute.
If we don’t we will all mutter
under our breath
“one more day… one more day…”
until the time
when the parade no longer carries on.
Anthony Signorelli
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