Nancy Byrne Iannucci

DamSELFISH                      

I say shut-up, quit squabbling,
time is running out, storms
keep moving in: Delta, Zeta,
Eta, and Iota.  And oh, let’s not
forget our friends:  ocean
acidification, overfishing,
and the picturesque garbage
patch chuckling with annuals
and perennials.

Abused sea creatures,
corals, each with a flurry of petal-like
tentacles, were once as fearsome as
whales, withstanding the blow
of boats and storms, but not now,
no, tempests detonate at the bottom
of the sea like the Hiroshima bomb,
leaving weakened reefs overturned in pieces.
Some say it’s selfish to put a price on nature,
to insure reefs and peat bogs like a commodity-
a restaurant on fire or a Benz in a crash.

But will this change your mind:
while a brigade of volunteers
in Mexico were first to put
insurance money to work,
cementing and stitching pieces
of tattered coral back together,
damselfish hurried back into
the alcoves of their restored homes

Rain

rushes in on a freight train
       drops to your feet
            in butterflies

 

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review 2018). Her poems have appeared in a number of publications including Gargoyle, Ghost City Press, Clementine Unbound, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Dodging the Rain, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Hobo Camp Review, Red Eft Review and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School. (https://www.instagram.com/nancybyrneiannucci/)