Global warming has been identified as a significant cause of coral bleaching. In 2016, bleaching hit 90% of the coral of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and killed 20% of it, according to The United Nations Environment Programme.

What a loss! I feel disgusted. Human-caused global warming has destroyed a treasure we may never see again.  As a way to memorialize the reef and other lost and endangered natural places, I am developing an anthology called Dear Mother Nature, a collection of poems, stories, and essays exploring the loss of natural places and ways of life.

My first poem for the collection is below. Click the link to contribute your own writing. All profits from sales of this collection will benefit the Union of Concerned Scientists in their continuing efforts to study and publicize the truth about climate change and all scientific matters despite the current defunding by the Trump administration.

Dear Coral

Sorry we overheated your atmosphere,

we didn’t love and hold your nature dear,

we didn’t stop and reflect, take action

to slow our reckless overproduction.

I’m sorry you’re now white as a ghost

while our progress and technology we boast;

racing fast in our feckless deathstyle

no one takes a moment to think or smile

or just breathes deep and appreciates

what we have, before it evaporates.

Contribute to the community anthology: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ysA0gSFMUx1bsPuEGhbhwVOQXT8bFPcvKgjLFuaXaQw/edit?usp=sharing

(photos: left. Grendelkhan – Own work. Also available from my Flickr., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1285516; rt. Acropora at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)