After the storm we threw spoiled food away then bought bread and milk,
a tray of eggs, their shells flecked with brown and copper—
A week later at the fair, under a deep blue sky, an artisan
showed us how he beat a sheet into an airy bangle of copper—
And tonight we looked up at the floodlit moon
to marvel at its largeness, its closeness, its copper—
Then we read how the Great Barrier Reef looks from space, bleached
with paleness from its dying; no more algae blooming coral—
While in the apiary, the wax moth and hive beetle inch closer.
Most bees are gone but the halls are still dusted with copper—
We’re here, my love, but only tenuously. I weep sometimes at the thought
of all we can’t control; how the very air burnishes the heart’s copper.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.