Poetry
Written poetry and spoken word submissions
Embracing Gentle Tides
Turtles
We once lived together
you and me
I swam and played with you
As happy as one could be
Little did I know
it would end so fast
I would have done anything
to make friendship last
Now you sit weeping
Covered in this plastic
With a burning hope to rejoin your children
But now you’re in a filth of acid
We hope it's not too late
We will fight till the end
And what was once truly yours
I will strive to mend
Medha Venkatapathy, 16, WA
My favorite animal is the turtle. Ever since I went to Hawaii during the summer of 2019, and saw wild turtles with my own eyes just feet away from me, I have felt the urge to spread knowledge on how to save these turtles. This is a short poem about the friendship humans used to have with turtles, living together hand in hand.
Equinox
~ s p r i n g ~
fragile buds twist and turn,
bloom under warm rays of pastel gold
nutrients taken from below the earth
feed and nourish
building growing plants
life starts anew,
greenery misted with dew
~ a u t u m n ~
fiery reds and oranges
drift down slowly, under
whispering tendrils of wind
those lush leaves
mount and pile
caps grow,
and saprotrophs triumph
the reign of Boletes and Parasols
digesting and breaking down
bringing the nutrients back underground
Mahathi Mangipudi, 17, WA
United for Climate Action
mother
when her icebergs melt
tears streak down her torn, scarred cheek
she'll wipe them and smile
Mahathi Mangipudi, 17, WA
This poem was inspired by sea level rise and extensive iceberg calving in Greenland. In this haiku, Earth is personified as our mother who provides for us. Despite this, we continue pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rising temperatures melt icebergs as if they are tears falling down her cheeks marred with urbanization and deforestation. But, humanity has existed in only a small fraction of Earth's history and our planet will recover and exist in an unimaginably different way. As she wipes her tears, we too must take action and smile for the future we can protect.
How Much Longer
How much longer can this last?
Until the forests are burned to ash
Until the oceans are filled with trash
Until the world we love is lost to the past?
How much longer will they continue
To give not even a penny
To ruin the future of so many
For the benefit of a small few
How much longer will we sit
As the cities fill with smog
As the trees turn into logs
As the world we love falls apart, bit by bit
How much longer?
Peter Scully, 17, CT
Inspired by others' passionate poems at an earth science camp I did this summer, I wrote this poem to express my frustration with our society's failure to take the necessary steps to protect our planet.