Poetry and Dinosaurs

The spring is slowly sending its green fingers up through the soil, and the smell of the air is calling me outside often these days. I am feeling time as a paradox, certainly— months have disappeared and the end of another semester teaching at RIT is drawing near.

I have been chipping away steadily on the sinew of my next piece Amplifying Feedback Loop, ensuring the flow and visuals.

Sticky notes to organize the main points of the loop

While I cannot attest to my writing, I find it to be so important to my work, and I explore it in stages. It feels odd, therefore, to both be writing poetry that connects with this piece but never will be used for it. So much of my “poetry” is free verse that feels more like slam— an explosion of feeling and written trippingly in hurried attempts to make the internal struggle external. Which is why, this time— my declarations on these matters need to be set aside for this piece.

Amplifying Feedback Loop is an attempt to show what we, as Humans, have caused and directly what can be done towards solutions at a community level. The biggest being advocacy—time donated to ensuring policy is changed for the betterment of our planet.

I learned recently about the Permian-Triassic Extinction. It is one of the largest extinction events on the planet, happening over 259 million years ago. Scientist hypothesized to be intense global carbon emission increase due to enormous Volcanic eruptions that shook the earth, altered the landscape and annihilated 95% of all life on this planet.

T-rex sketch drawn while visiting The Smithsonian

To think that so much life, plant and animal, terrestrial and marine— was destroyed and we still, in a lucky 12,000 peaceful years, had enough stability to develop agriculture, cities, trade and more— to be the cause of our own downfall is disquieting.