O Snail
by
Jane Hirshfield Under the Svalbard ice cap, Carboniferous-era coal seams. A good farmer rotates her crops. The crops don’t complain. It’s the fate of stalks and forests to vanish. Last year’s fires: Australia, Portugal, Greece. This: California. O snail, wrote Issa, climb Fuji slowly, slowly. From World Literature Today, Summer 2019. Also in Ledger, New York: Knopf, 2020, page 48 (as shown here). |