BY TRICIA KNOLL

The worn-downs will ramble on about old days

and ask the young ones to walk off their fat

over browned-out golf courses through drifts

of vortex snow between home and learning labs.

Science foundations will raffle off opportunities to name

ice chunks in the Kuiper Belt to fund water projects,

as astronomers argue about the ninth planet’s orbit

in online peer-reviewed journals.

Vocabularies morph. We’ll hear

coywolves singing to a littered moon

of rusted flags. Sparred owls replace

barreds and spotted northerns.

Parents, form your lips to say grolies

when polar bears mate with grizzlies

to read new alphabet books

for toddlers poking digital notepads.

Good people will argue on blogs

in the fifteen languages left on earth

about the cost of feeding dogs or classism

and regret how they let down the whales.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont eco-poet. Her collection Ocean’s Laughter looks at change over time in a small town on Oregon’s north coast. Broadfork Farm chronicles the people and creatures of a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington. For more poetry visit triciaknoll.com.