My Poetry

Droughts

This one is my least favorite but here you go

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Rain

Essential to life, essential to breathe,

Brings life to the roots, life to the leaves,

Essential to crops, essential to drink,

Brings the water that runs through your sink,

Essential for plants to grow, essential for them to makes air.

Brings life to the desert on each of those rare

     summer days that it pours, everyone watching stunned in awe,

As water runs through cities, through the outdoors, happy that they saw

     the beautiful  thing that makes us all function,

But due to the changing climate, there has been a malfunction.

Camels store water in fat,

living up to seven months without rain,

Some tortoises drink their urine and the kangaroo rat

never drinks, instead getting water from grain,

The Thorny Devil from Australia collects water between it's spikes,

Harvesting water droplets for when drought season strikes.

All of these creatures can live a while without rain,

But even the best end up dead or else just in pain,

After going too long without fresh water in their veins,

Humans need water too and droughts are dangerous- but our brains

Can't seem to connect the dots between climate change and the lack of storms

For the dry years we have today are but another one of global warming's forms.

Every year in some places a new record dry is set,

Whereas in others everything is simply way too wet,

As temperature rise the water cycle gets faster,

Things evaporate more quickly and we are headed for disaster.

This means there is more water in the sky,

This means some places are getting more rain and flooding rates are high,

The whole system is crazy: West Africa is scarily dry,

Elsewhere there is so much water that people actually die.

Droughts affect agriculture, energy production, every aspect of society,

Depending on the intensity and duration there is a large variety,

Of problems that occur without the necessary storms,

The earth is going crazy, too dry, too wet, too cold, too warm.

Indegiinious populations struggle more during droughts

For they often don't have money to pay for water in their house,

Illness becomes more common as water gets harder to find,

Essential plants and animals get sick or die, it happens to all kinds

     of species that we need to keep our ecosystems align

Every time a species dies we get closer to running out of time.

As rain is rare and everything gets drier,

Do you know what else also gets higher?

The likelihood of hotter, scarier wildfires,

We all need to aspire

     to solve this problem for the 200 people that die each year of thirst

For the startling statistics that will only get worse.

For the sake of the tribes or the town, whichever makes you feel most bad,

For the plants and animals, whatever makes you feel most sad,

For the girls that walk miles to get water for their house,

For the miles of deserts that haven't been doused,

For the cities getting banned from using hoses or water spouts,

For the people that turn on their sink and no water comes out,

For the dry creek beds that are supposed to fuel entire towns

For the places with hurricanes and monsoons making people drown.

We need to step forward instead of stepping back

We need to face climate change, work together if we are gay, straight, white, black,

We need creativity, innovation, crazy thoughts: people to not just be aware,

Awareness is great but we also need to care,

About more than borders, politicians, and welfare,

Act as if you are the one who is dehydrated, drowning, burning, and crying,

Because if the earth continues to get hotter we all will be dying.