Thinking About Climate Catastrophe and Peter Iredale Shipwreck Near Astoria, Oregon October 25, 1906

Charles Knowles from Meridian Idaho, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Thinking About Climate Catastrophe
and Peter Iredale Shipwreck Near Astoria,
Oregon October 25, 1906

London’s Board of Trade noted December 24, 1906
“an exceedingly heavy west north-west squall struck the vessel”
overpowering captain and crew,
forever grounding the 285 foot steel barque
on shore of Clatsop Beach
“in a thick mist” and tidal pull of Columbia River.
Photos showed the vessel was glorious
with tangled sails and three snapped masts.

Later, according to June 7, 1960 Enterprise-Courier,
“Clatsop county residents [protecting the wreck
from a possible salvager] established machine gun nests [ . . . .]
for armed conflict” if necessary
but over the years tide, rust, storm tore her apart
leaving an iron skeleton on the beach.
Oregon photographer Danielle Denham posted images
from 1900 to 2020 showing the decay.

Escaping Nakia Creek Fire in October 2022,
hiking by Iredale with my dogs
makes me dream a beach of ghost ships
as far as the eye can see
scattered like fire-bombed houses,
names of countries on their bows.

Regarding the COP process, Climate Adam, Doctor in climate science from Oxford, did a great job of showing "what these negotiations look like up close and personal" when he attended COP24 2018 in Poland. He said, "I came back from the Conference feeling more angry, and more upset, about climate change than I think I felt in my entire life."

See Gabrielle Schwarz's "‘It was like an apocalyptic movie’: 20 climate photographs that changed the world" in The Guardian November 5, 2022.  

If you're disgusted with the COP process and climate images, check out Clive Hamilton's article in The Guardian September 6, 2022, "I’ve had a long battle with climate despair. Now I’m leaving the ‘denial machine’ to their demons," similar to my post about 50-year activist Joanna Macy. 

I'm grateful my poem "The Hunger" was included in the new anthology River Poems by Penguin Random House along with work by RALPH WALDO EMERSON, HENRY DAVID THOREAU, PABLO NERUDA, TED HUGHES, DAVID WAGONER, CHARLES WRIGHT, WANG WEI, EDGAR ALLAN POE, WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, ROBERT FROST, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, WILLIAM STAFFORD, DIANE WAKOSKI, KAY RYAN, GARY SNYDER, NATASHA TRETHEWEY, RAYMOND CARVER, WALT WHITMAN, RUDYARD KIPLING, T.S. ELIOT, W.H. AUDEN, HAYDEN CARRUTH, JAMES DICKEY, SHUNTARO TANIKAWA, WENDELL BERRY, LOUISE GLÜCK, LOUISE ERDRICH, ALICE OSWALD, EMILY ROSKO,   From The Epic of Gilgamesh, WILLIAM BLAKE, JÓNAS HALLGRÍMSSON, WILFRED OWEN, RABINDRANATH TAGORE, OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II, CONSTANCE URDANG, STEVIE SMITH, JAMES WRIGHT, CITTADHAR HṚDAYA, WILLIAM MEREDITH, CHARLES BUKOWSKI, TSITSI ELLA JAJI,  JAMES GALVIN, JORGE HUMBERTO CHÁVEZ, TRACY SMITH, TODD DAVIS, LAOZI, DU FU, KOBAYASHI ISSA, UEJIMA ONITSURA, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, OSCAR WILDE, MARCEL PROUST, GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE, WALLACE STEVENS,  LANGSTON HUGHES, BUDDHĀDASA BHIKKHU, SYLVIA PLATH, ROBERT BLY, GRACE PALEY, EAVAN BOLAND, MARY OLIVER,  SAM HAMILL, TCHICAYA U TAM’SI, PAULA BOHINCE, ZHANG RUOXU, MATSUO BASHO, EMILY DICKINSON, WILLIAM GIBSON, ALICE MEYNELL, VALERY BRYUSOV, HART CRANE, CARL SANDBURG, MARINA TSVETAEVA, ROBINSON JEFFERS, RUTH PITTER , EUGENIO MONTALE, THEODORE ROETHKE, DAVID BOTTOMS, JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS, and BRUCE BOND.

I'm also grateful I was invited to teach an ecopoetry workshop my fourth year at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Masters of Advanced Studies Program in Climate Science and Policy. Here is a post about a workshop there in 2019.