“…deregulation would drive “a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” –EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin; as quoted in the New York Times, May 24, 2025, on the gutting of power plant regulations  

* * *

I sing from my hymnal of data points
collected high atop Mauna Loa
lonely high notes burned clean of hope
spiraling, they scald my throat              

                            [and still: I believe]
  

My faith is evidence-based
it warms me like heat warnings
wilting Alaska in June;
it stings my eyes like orange-brown
clouds of wildfire smoke
rolling across Iowa              

                           [I weep and I believe]


My prayer book bids me 

Do not pollute the land where you are  

My prayer book chides me
Do not defile the land where you live              

                           [so long as I believe, I shall not be lost]
  

My religious mission, to listen 
to the birds of the sky (even as the sky empties)  
and to witness the fish perishing in hotter seas
(oceans heating, coral reefs bleaching)              

                           [I believe and I weep]   

My morning prayer: may seeds
of weedy sense be rooted
in the soil beneath us all—even
those most greedily deluded              

                           [somehow, I believe]    

The time has come (as Matthew forewarned) to beware 

false prophets, who come dressed in sheep’s clothing 

but inwardly are ravenous wolves—

hungry ghosts, I call them       
                          [their daggers cannot touch me, so long as I believe]