Poems by Charlotte Melin
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Rain in the Anthropocene
by Charlotte Melin
From Canary Summer 2022
Charlotte lives on the Cannon River, which flows into the Mississippi south of the confluence with the Minnesota at Bdote Minisota, a Dakota sacred site.
Rain briefly breaks the drought.
I open a window to hear
the sound of its fall on
dry leaves at night, to smell
the sweet scent wafting up
from the earth, anticipating
the scant greenness that will
come in the morning.
Too little to save the crops,
to quench the wildfires,
but enough for the moment
to breathe and look for
what can potentially be salvaged—
a habitable planet for our children,
a remnant of peace
in this asymmetrical world,
where it has also just rained
for the first time in Greenland.
© Charlotte Melin
Solstice
by Charlotte Melin
The solstice waits
like a banked fire—
embers at sunrise,
smoldering sparks
at the sunset end of
a somber afternoon.
What do we look for
in these times,
a light-word
flaring against
the dark? Only
a string of geese
scribbles its way
across the sky.
© Charlotte Melin