News Flash from the Antarctic

by Diana Woodcock

Here’s what we know with certainty:

Far far below, vast ice shields are melting;

the sea is releasing ancient carbon dioxide;

increasingly more violent winds

are changing critical currents.

Here’s what we sense with intense

awe and reverence: All of life is sanctified,

beautiful and tied together with a oneness

that was harmonious until man began

to tinker with it all.

Here’s what we know with fear

and trembling: It’s all about to fall

apart because of our disconnection

to the holiness – wholeness – of

everything. All around us, we can

see severity and yet beauty.

We languish between hope and a

paralyzing sense of fate – fear that

it’s too late, clinging to a sense

of tenderness toward existence.

We go on straining to hear above

the lamentations celestial music,

intent on rising above the burden

of fatality and grief. But with unwavering

belief, here’s what we know: Sorrow

makes fertile ground for joy. And beyond

the hollow space of silence can be heard

the grace of that joyful praise

            Alhamdulillah

Hallelujah

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Diana Woodcock has authored seven chapbooks and six poetry collections, most recently Heaven Underfoot (winner of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry's role in the search for an environmental ethic.