Dear Reader,

Happy Friday!

Hello from Colorado, where, after a week of terrible air quality, it's incredibly beautiful and the skies are blue:

Until today, the air has been full of smoke from multiple forest fires. As someone from the East Coast, I've mostly taken for granted being able to breathe fresh air, and though I've certainly been aware of the danger of fire in our changing climate, being up close has been a wake-up call.

In Europe, there are horrific heat waves and fires. Around the world, millions of people don't have clean air to breathe--all because of what human beings have done.

Today, I want to share two poems from my book I Say the Sky that feel related, and also share an article my daughter published recently about the relationship between environmental rollbacks and women's rights.

I also want to invite you to join me, if you're in Colorado near Colorado Springs, for a free poetry reading next Sunday, July 19th from 6-8pm. I'll be reading with the wonderful poets Mary Margaret Alvarado and Michele Battiste (feel free to email me if you can come; I'd love to see you in person!).

As a writer, poet, teacher, and coach, I believe that the issue of our time is to tell a different story. Not one in which a few dominate, but one in which we come back into greater balance. The health of our environment, democracy, equality; immigrant rights, women's rights, economic stability— all go hand in hand.

For over seventy-five years oil companies have known about the damage that fossil fuels cause; similarly, monoculture farming, the "green" revolution, the rise of Monsanto, the increase in factory farming, the degradation of soil—all lead to a process of growing heat, ecosystem collapse, water insecurity, and desertification. Now, data centers for AI will use the already limited water supplies that we have and accelerate our collapse. Billionaires and autocrats dominate our politics.

What do we do in the face of this?

It's my hope that each of us can be part of a movement that places power back where it belongs. Our ability to pay attention to this beautiful world and our ability to give voice to what is important are essential for humanity's future.

Here is the article my daughter published recently that links the stories we tell about the environment and gender roles.

I’m sharing two poems from my book I Say the Sky below.

And if you’d like to take some action by writing postcards to get out the vote in the upcoming midterm elections, please reply to this email, let me know, and I can help you do so.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Thank you for being here and thank you for being you!

with love,
Nadia

Power

I turn the questions over and over
when I cannot sleep,
when my mind will not turn off.

The waters of the ocean creep up the shore.
The temperature slides up
half a degree, then more.

The high glacial shelf in the arctic
breaks off.
What is it that I want?

At my daughter’s camp,
at night when it’s hot,
in the dark, the girls take off

their clothes at the docks
at the lip of the lake
for “special swimming.”

I want to take off my clothes
for special writing
in a dark that is soft

in the water that will hold
me, my body still a girl’s
with the whole world

before me, opening in song,
the words not yet written
on the page: O:

letter by letter, as the oil,
drop by drop, is coaxed
from the earth, is held

together, broken apart, taken
into the guts of fish, their
cells, our mouths, our milk—

Dare we ask for what we really want?
​
​

The End of History

History, I say, with its high ramparts, its engraved swords.

I say the bees are falling from the skies, the apples will not come into
bloom this year

or next. The fish gorge themselves on plastic.

Or I say the sky is blue today with nimbus clouds.

I say the girl, her clothes ripped off, underneath the guard’s heavy weight,

is named Deborah. I say the child frozen at his mother’s breast has stopped

his cries. We must do something.

I say the hawk sits in the high branches.

I say the mother sits on the cold cement floor.

I say yesterday I was full of fear and today the sky is blue with nimbus clouds.

We must act quickly. The world loves itself,

falls into itself with open arms, devoured, devouring.

(both by Nadia Colburn from I Say the Sky)