For My Daughter
Michelle Regalado Deatrick

When I sweat in a Midwest January
         and wish to God it was a hot flash but know
it’s greenhouse gasses–read the news:
         Uranium seas rained on by iodine skies–
Sunday drives, see the Kalamazoo shimmer
         spills of bitumen, kills of brown trout,
dioxin wells irrigate the emerald fields,
         farmhouses where fracking flames
flow from kitchen taps–I think of you then, grown
         old long after I’m gone, and wonder what you’ll remember–
that day last September, cold apples
         and clear water, the still-sweet grass, and the paper
plates, the plastic cups, how we threw away
         the whole green and generous world
             and left you there.

Originally appeared in subTerrain’s “Our Dying Planet” print issue (#63, Winter, 2013) and was a Finalist for the 2013 Split This Rock contest.