Today's poem is by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Why have children when the world is ending?
       

Killer whales have stopped reproducing.
Polar bears are eating their cubs.

Koalas abandon their young. Breathless,
nose low to the brush to keep

from choking on rising smoke,
they run towards the thousands,

pounds of food we airdropped
where earth stopped burning or

flames just hadn't reached yet,
guilt for our part in this end

or fear it would come for us
the same. We tell ourselves

everything just wants to survive.

Believe in life as circle, not line.
In Karma, if it means our endurance.

We spread stories about wombats
herding animals into their burrows,

kangaroos hugging their rescuers,
or foxes feeding baby bears

uncharred, canidae milk. But animals
know to rely on no one. Their own

scathed hides and carcasses pile
the roadsides along bus routes

to the local preschool. The children
we chose to have must fight

gagging at the smell. My infant
daughter screams at us

for plunging the bulb syringe
deep into her nostril.

She exhales snot mixed
with my milk, screams

again, then sleeps.
She doesn't know

we've made this quiet
possible. She turns her head away

where breathing comes easiest
and reaches for a warm body

as soon as she can smell it close.
She doesn't know the coral reefs

are dead and sargassum reeks
in mounds along Caribbean coastline,

starfish suffocated under its spreading.
And maybe this is why

we've made her. Because
she doesn't know survival

is in our hands, forgives us
their indiscretions, and lets us

hold her body as though
it were a world

we could still save.

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Copyright © 2023 Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach All rights reserved
from 40 Weeks
YesYes Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission