The cavalry’s here,
loud as thunder, wild and wiser,
like a nobility
of beasts—catch the light
where x marks the spot
and if anyone asks,
this poem is a map
that lapses daily,
sees clearly two seadragons
spinning snout-to-snout
and pods of cetaceans
fueled by clouds
of pink crustaceans—
the shape of the Arctic
is less solid now,
fading into swaths
of milky blue—
and above us, dying stars
consuming their weight
in gas and dust—we’re a throbbing
mass of grief and limbs
like whale food, or swollen
coastlines—do me a kindness
and repeat this worship
of humans, their book
of remembrance
a cadence of heartbeats
more than a thousand
a minute, short-winged
and foraging for flowers
which bloomed much earlier.
If I could I would
gather this shimmer—
this wonder of stars,
stop the world from burning,
the seas from rising—
be the cavalry
or a reliance of stewards:
remember what it means to love you
________________
Aileen Cassinetto was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow in 2021. In 2023, she co-edited the climate change anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time, a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, for poets to contribute to the urgent conversations on environmental justice.
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