Poems by Mark R. Moe
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Adaptation
by Mark R. Moe
From Canary Spring 2022
Mark lives in the stark wonderland of the Sonoran desert, a land of infinite cacti, rolling hills, arroyos, and wrinkled mountains. It’s a land you learn to love for its tenacious beauty.
when you strain to see
the grouse that blends so perfectly
into shreds of leaf and bark, made
mad mosaic by dappled shade
and dancing light, it may
strike you that nature plays
a benign game of interference
belying her indifference
then take another, closer look
to understand what you can’t see -
all the other grouse it took
to achieve invisibility
© Mark R. Moe
The Greenland Ice Sheet
by Mark R. Moe
From the air, it has the serenity
of permanence, that eerie
silence of some timeless fact.
But below are hidden rivers.
There in the flowing water
Is the only warning sound.
Once its silence was the sleep
of an eternal cold, of winters
that fed and fattened it.
The silence it now speaks
is of decay in a tongue
taken from the pitiless sun.
Dark water speeds the epic melt,
while the fissures open wider,
like a truth that dawns too late.
Past the point of no return,
the ice becomes the ocean,
its rising too slow for reality
TV. Dull data says 234 billion
Tons of ice were shed last year,
A figure that means nothing
Will be left by 3010, when the seas
have risen 23 feet, which also means
Miami is no more. Yes, it’s secret, silent,
slow, but so it often is
with deadly things.
© Mark R. Moe