By Katherine Wang, Shine Yuan (Class of 2024), and Katrina Hu (Class of 2025)

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.”

– Carl Sandburg

The scratching of a pencil on paper is the only sound that fills the silence. Eighteen heads are bent over their papers, hard at work. A single hand is raised–a question nervously asked. The whiteboard is filled with poem samples used as inspiration and our heads with ideas and images moving too fast to be put onto paper. 

On Tuesday, February 12th, the Junior High class at DVGS had the wonderful opportunity to meet Ms. Blake More, a poet from Point Arena, California. Ms. More is one of the Poetry Out Loud judges and is also an activist. Her appearance was a welcome surprise and helped us reflect on the effects of climate change.

Ms. More, after introducing herself, showed us a video called A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician and activist. This video talked about climate change and explained the Green New Deal, which is a plan the government proposed to prevent global warming. It had incredibly amazing hand-drawn paintings to captivate our whole class. In accord with the video, Ms. More showed us some sample poems about climate change written by high-school students to inspire and encourage us to write our own poems. After reading and analyzing these poems, we tried to write our own poems, taking ideas and inspiration from the samples. Lastly, after finishing our poems, we took pictures and sent them to Ms. More so she could see our work. Everyone had their own opinions on global warming and it was interesting to hear about everyone’s view on the changing planet. 

This was an incredible opportunity to explore the idea of global warming and know that we have the power to change it. Ms. More helped us open our eyes to the devastating effects of climate change on our beautiful planet and inspired us to act on this problem. We greatly appreciate the time and energy she spent on us and hope that she will come again to visit in the near future. Thank you Ms. More!

Here are three of the poems that we wrote:

The End

A defending thunder,
Waves yelling louder.
Everything collapses,
Submerged by the water.
Humans, is this what you want?
A big havoc,
To humans, to animals.
After all,
The end of human beings.
The Earth takes care of us,
so we need to protect the Earth.
Humans’ deaths
depend on ourselves
We clasp Earth,
like our own baby.
We smile to Earth,
In order to show our endless friendship.
Peaceful, happy, and lively
is what Earth is supposed to be
Humans, this is what we want
A happy ending.

Everything is Gone

Climate change? Haha, you’re funny
Can you see the marine lives struggling to death?
Can you see the environment become withering and bare?
Can you see the pollution of the lakes, the air?
The threat of climate change
Believe it or not?
It’s a warning from the ‘sky’!

Watch

Watch the fire burn and crackle
Twisting, turning
Leaping, dancing
Watch the sparks fly, glowing red
Lighting up the darkness- and the flame runs ahead
Feel the heat and feel the pain
And instead of warmth, you pray for rain
Watch it grow, watch it devour
Watch the bravest shrink and cower
Hear the creaks and wretched groans
Before all that’s left is ash and bones
But still it advances, to plunder and steal
Not gold and riches but wills of steel
Still we watch, watch it burn, watch it destroy
Watch as it robs some of homes and some of joy
Smell the smoke and feel the fear
Of losing all that you hold dear-
And we watch.