Carol A. Amato

That Spring, After the Flood

            we found their letters

            the ink blurred in a stream

            down the pages

            and tried to peel apart the photos

            glued to one another

            by wet chemistry.

            What became of them

            the blurred images still

            posing perhaps smiling

            suspended now unremembered?

            Their books

            swelled to twice their size

            jostle for space on the shelves.

            The sofa and chairs heavy with ballast

            wait for their weary bodies.

            From the fogged windows we watch

            the river now receded to its muddy banks.

            Soon the leggy fields with the doe-eyed cows

            will perhaps return but perhaps not.

            The floor boards buckle beneath us

            and we feel the planet shudder with

            the constant rattles of death throes

            in the bones of elephants

            the melt of glaciers

            the last cries of condors

            forewarned but denied,

            that inevitability too close

            we cling to the branches of redwoods

            the wings of the albatross

            the backs of whales.

My poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently: The Poet’s Touchstone (New Hampshire Poetry Society); 2019 Connecticut River Review, Avocet, A Journal of Nature Poetry (print and weekly), The Aurorean, Quill’s Edge Press Anthology, Poem, The Cape Cod Times Poetry Page, and others. I was a prizewinner in the recent Connecticut Poetry Society contest and also nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. I am a natural science educator and wrote a nature series for children (The Young Reader’s Series - ten books) published by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. and John Wiley & Sons (Backyard Pets: Exploring Nature Close to Home). I also conduct classroom natural science programs to encourage inquiry in young children considering that the more they learn, the more they will care about saving our natural world.