Air Date: Week of August 7, 2026

Poet Catherine Pierce confronts the climate emergency head-on in her work, and even finds beauty within it. (Photo: Catherine Pierce)

In her poems, Catherine Pierce grapples with unfolding climate disaster and reflects on finding beauty amidst the ecological disarray of the Anthropocene. Here she reads her poem “Anthropocene Pastoral” from her 2020 collection Danger Days.

Transcript

BELTRAN: Flowers made our world – and we are remaking it, and them, in the age of the Anthropocene. Here’s Catherine Pierce, former Poet Laureate of Mississippi, with a poem titled, “Anthropocene Pastoral.”

PIERCE: In the beginning, the ending was beautiful.
Early spring everywhere, the trees furred
pink and white, lawns the sharp green
that meant new. The sky so blue it looked
manufactured. Robins. We’d heard
the cherry blossoms wouldn’t blossom
this year, but what was one epic blooming
when even the desert was an explosion
of verbena? When bobcats slinked through
primroses. When coyotes slept deep in orange
poppies. One New Year’s Day we woke
to daffodils, wisteria, onion grass wafting
through the open windows. Near the end,
we were eyeletted. We were cottoned.
We were sundressed and barefoot. At least
it’s starting gentle, we said. An absurd comfort,
we knew, a placebo. But we were built like that.
Built to say at least. Built to reach for the heat
of skin on skin even when we were already hot,
built to love the purpling desert in the twilight,
built to marvel over the pink bursting dogwoods,
to hold tight to every pleasure even as we
rocked together toward the graying, even as
we held each other, warmth to warmth,
and said sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry while petals
sifted softly to the ground all around us.

BELTRAN: That’s Catherine Pierce, former Poet Laureate of Mississippi, reading her poem “Anthropocene Pastoral”, from her 2020 collection Danger Days.

 

Links

Catherine Pierce’s poetry and more