Love in the time of climate change - by Craig Santos Perez

A love poem for a warming world — borrowed from Neruda, rewritten for now. Craig Santos Perez takes the shape of Neruda's Sonnet XVII and fills it with rare earth metals, vanishing species, and rising seas — a love that can no longer pretend to exist outside the planet it's on. Sit with "Love in a Time of Climate Change," and hear what tenderness sounds like when our average temperatures are going up....Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santoz Perezrecycling Pablo Nerudas "Sonnet XVII"I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species: 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 world will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.I love you like this because we'll only survivein 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....