Race to the Anthropocene
A Poem by David K. Leff
My heart has little left for fear of living.
Time is broken,
an accelerating geological future-shock
convulsing the planet, triumph
of invention over biology.
September’s warmth bleeds
into October, and I watch March
steal April’s flowers as internal
combustion explodes in suicide
corrupting even the winds.
I’m witness to wildness tamed,
soil husbanded out of existence
with a final crop of pavement—
forest to dairy farm
to golf course and shopping plaza.
The Holocene is dead,
the slow unfolding of epochs
deranged by time-lapsed human-tectonic
change, wheels spinning too fast
for the living world.
Still, I believe in beaver dams,
haunting loon tremolos and wails,
the courage of turtles surviving since
Triassic times, multigenerational
migrations of monarchs.
With dread resisting awe,
I hope against hope
for creative dreaming and awakening
before the turning point
beyond which there is no return.
David K. Leff (he/him) is an award-winning poet and essayist, and former deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. He is the Canton, Connecticut poet laureate, deputy town historian, and town meeting moderator. He was a volunteer firefighter for 26 years.
In 2016 and 2017 David was appointed by the National Park Service to serve as poet-in-residence for the New England National Scenic Trail (NET). He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, and has twice been a finalist in the Connecticut Book Awards. David has received two silver medals from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), and was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His work has appeared in anthologies, newspapers such as the Hartford Courant, and magazines including Appalachia and Yankee.
The author of seven nonfiction books, three volumes of poetry, and two novels in verse, David’s work focuses on the connection of people to their communities and the natural environment. He often explores commonplace elements of the world around us that have hidden meanings and unusual links to each other.
David has been the book review editor of Connecticut Woodlands, the quarterly magazine of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association and is now poetry editor. He is a staff writer for The Wayfarer Magazine.
David’s papers are located at the Special Collections and University Archives, UMass/Amherst. View his work at www.davidkleff.com
