Love in a Time of Climate Change
recycling Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII"
I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals,
conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that causewar.
I love you as one loves the most vulnerablespecies:
urgently, between the habitat and its loss.
I love you as one loves the last seed saved within a vault,
gestating the heritage of our roots,and thanks to your body,
the taste that ripens from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.
I love you without knowing how or when this worldwill end.
I love you organically, without pesticides.
I love you like this because we'll only survive
in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace,
so close that your emissions of carbon are mine,
so close that your sea rises with my heat.