I know, the air is orange and hurricanes are on winstrol
and snow is wandering around like a neglected great-grandmother
searching for a beloved gradeschool glacier long since gone.
And into this mess walks John P. Wilson.
Know this: John P. Wilson has great hair.
We should never ignore the excellence of John P. Wilson’s hair.
And maybe his hair can stand as a symbol today of the news he carries?
Our gloriously-haired prophet rising out of USC to tell us about the rise of rice in China?
April of twenty-twenty, we the people of Earth dropped our daily emissions seventeen percent,
and John P. Wilson, he of the astonishing hair, looked at photos of the Middle Kingdom from space
and noticed that spring had arrived eight-point-four days earlier than average,
with a percentage increase in leaf coverage of seventeen-point-four-five.
I do love me a seventeen-point-four-five percent more leaves, when most of what I read is
transplants wiping out oaks and oceans invading new neighborhoods and smoke rising
from Cabul to Kalifornia—and everyone priming their musket for their neighbor.
And John P. Wilson, surrounded by the same misery as me,
found time to do his hair and to look at the greenery of the People’s Republic from space.
Another scientist, after expressing his appropriately scientifical skepticism, tells the Post,
“If radiation increases, then the photosynthetic activity will be greater,”
which makes sense and me wonder what else we might see, if we look—
How else might we unFall this world?
If I reduce my scowling by seventeen percent, perhaps those faces under their masks
may smile seventeen-point-four-five times more often.
If you refrain from microwaving popcorn from four to nine
you might just lose five of those pounds that so worry your beloved.
And if we take the time to scan and rhyme
perhaps we’ll see beyond our own lifetime.
Optimism is stupid—only—if all we do is burn.
But if the plants can arrive a week early
just because we all stayed home
let’s break out this battered Monopoly board
and for seventeen hours refuse to pass GO.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/08/25/covid-china-climate-change-study/
Theric Jepson has lived in small towns and big cities, and has witnessed raw nature in both, making him a firm believer in speaking with the crows. His writings at the intersection of environment and religion have been published in Wilderness Interface Zone, Psaltery & Lyre, Califragile, and are forthcoming in Blossom as the Cliffrose (Torrey House Press, 2021). For more, follow Theric on Twitter @thmazing.