Sunday Morning

Poetry by David Starkey

Poem 1 of 2

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David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2010 Poet Laureate and is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including The American Scholar, The Georgia Review and The Southern Review, and in six full-length collections, most recently It Must Be Like the World and Circus Maximus.

I believe climate change is the most pressing issue for all of us on the planet--and I know I'm not alone in that belief--so it seems odd that the topic is rarely addressed head-on in contemporary literature. Maybe it's that creative writers are still looking for ways to address the subject without sounding preachy. Literature thrives on ambiguity, and there's nothing ambiguous about carbon dioxide levels topping 400 parts per million. These two poems represent my very imperfect attempts to make poetry out of the increasing sense of doom I feel. It's hard, but I'll keep trying.