Green Tea

A zingy October day, over-hot
green tea
and the oak still in full leaf outside the window.

A few leaves spider around
the fragile glass
tiny roots swirling through the substrata.

Sunlight razors through,
floods the cup
with brilliance, fires the spinning particles

until it looks like a chalice
of dying stars,
like I’m holding a glassful of the planet in my hands.

Published in Dust Poetry Magazine, October 2023

Five Degrees

Take one – another atoll gone, droughts, faster rate
of ice melt. Sweltering taxis. A few mortuaries fail
to cope in The Pyrenees. Chin up, it’s not too late.

Two degrees – forget the Med. Instead, investigate
Aberystwyth for a tan. Gozo is a no-go. You can sail
across London in a skiff! Now the planet’s heart-rate

skips a beat. Three degrees is when the floodgates
open. Holland (and the coral) gone. A large-scale
exodus from Africa. Geo-engineers arrive too late.

Work hard for a degree at Oxford-by-the-Sea, wait
for a Balliol boat. Bail out – Cambridge is a folktale.
At four, methane leaks from the sea floor, the rate

accelerates. Mangrove swamps, sapodillas recreate
the tropics in Paris. Bananas on a boulevard; so shale
had an upside after all! Take the fifth – way too late

to keep the lid on oceanic gas explosions so great
Hiroshima is but a flicker. Then the final coffin nail:
supercharged fireballs banging into cities at a rate
of knots. The lid lowers by degrees. Sorry: too late.

Published in Magma Schools Issue, 2023