Solastalgia

“I remember the first summer I noticed the trees shriveling, turning grey, eaten from the inside out. The air was hot and the rain never came. The swing tree and the joy it brought, lives now only in my mind.

I remember the first winter I noticed that the snow wasn’t falling as heavy as it used to. Roads without snowbanks, muddy ski trails, and trick-or-treaters without bulky layers under their costumes.

I remember the summer I pulled fish from the river, their bodies smaller than I’d grown to know. The time I saw white bellies in an eddy, where the water had pooled and the temperature rose.

I remember returning home from college. Seeing the retreat of glaciers, once clear blue and towering, now out of reach. Small things, white and dirty. 4 short years – a lifetime.

I’m not much older now.

The world will not be what it was.”

I was born on the wind,

iron and frost in my veins.

The world felt wide, barefooted, and wild

busy, rushing forward,

and in the blur the past was lost.

I emerged first on the edge of stillness.

Snow falling lightly, rivers coming to rest.

I wish I’d held on tighter then,

but my eyes opened slowly

on a world already turning.

Time twists forward, youth transitions.

When did I start to notice?

Snow wasn’t falling as heavy as it used to.

Roads without snowbanks and dirty ski trails,

trick-or-treaters, light, absent of bulky layers.

Each year the sun returns and brings with it the light,
a manic technicolor blooms and blinds as it passes by. 
The weight lifts for a moment, atoms separated on a breeze 
hiked high above the tree line,
wilderness vast, yet undisturbed.

Spring break was once for skiing. 
Sun shining, reflecting blindly off snow,
exposed skin, warm and cool, 
tears streaming from the howling wind, 
the unknown mourning, bittersweet now.

Summertime still finds me grateful, 
standing knee deep, pulling fish out from the river, 
hunting under leaves for glimpses of blue or red or pink.
Berries juicy, mouth full, 
face painted, a soul sustained

The sun seems to shine brighter now.
The air is hot and rain doesn’t come 
trees shriveling, standing dead, eaten from the inside out. 
A swing tree, the joy it brought, 
lives trapped now, in memorial.

When did I first notice?
Bodies shrinking, 
smaller than I'd grown to know.
White bellies in shallow eddies, 
where water pools and temperatures rise.

The flowers die in autumn, with them I am reborn. 
When the days cool, there is small hope 
that something has survived.
Through the smoke and bugs and heat 
the arctic begs to be frozen once more.

Blissful thinking, floats in mid-air. 
I look down now, at remnants of what was.
Then and now converge, overlapping in my mind. 
Collective fear. 
The unreliable future.

The tide pulls out leaving its collections on the sand,
softened with each wave, 
a history written in dust.
Little by little, they're carried away, 
precious in their scarcity.

I wish I’d held on tighter,
watched the world change more intently. 
That one regret, still multiplying.
Sometimes, if I shut my eyes really tight, 
it feels like they're still here.

It’s all slipping, beyond repair. 
Each day, is this my home? 
Somewhere lurking, grief undefined.
Will there be time to savor 
what I don’t know won’t come again?

Solastalgia

xochiyollotl