Poem of the Week: Michelle Regalado Deatrick

 
                  

For My Daughter 

 

When I sweat in a Midwest January

....and wish to God it was a hot flash but know 

it's greenhouse gasses--read the news:

....Uranium seas rained on by iodine skies--
Sunday drives, see the Kalamazoo shimmer 

....spills of bitumen, kills of brown trout, 

dioxin wells irrigate the emerald fields,

....farmhouses where fracking flames 

flow from kitchen taps--I think of you then, grown

....old long after I'm gone, and wonder what you'll remember-- 

that day last September, cold apples

....and clear water, the still-sweet grass, and the paper 

plates, the plastic cups, how we threw away

....the whole green and generous world 

.....................................................and left you there.

-Michelle Regalado Deatrick 

Used by permission.  

Originally appeared in subTerrain's "Our Dying Planet" print issue (#63, Winter, 2013) and was a Finalist for the 2013 Split This Rock contest.  

Michelle Regalado Deatrick was the Winner of the 2012 Chautauqua Poetry Contest; she has been a fellow at Ragdale, VCCA, and MacDowell. Her work appears in the American Literary Review, subTerrain, Best New American Voices and many other publications. An advocate for environmental issues and small farm rights, Michelle lives on an eighty-acre farm and native prairie, teaches poetry workshops for the University of Michigan's Lifelong Learning Institute, and is Communications Director for the Michigan Small Farm Council.More of Michelle's writing can be found at www.michelleregaladodeatrick.com.

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