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When the Sun Eats the Sky
by Henry Howard

It was an article easily missed
In the latest blasts from Iraq,
A small, quiet piece with a thunderous warning:
“Link shown between frog extinctions and global warming.”

A verdant rainforest where the sun hardly shines
Would seem a strange place to look for signs
That frogs and birds and animals die
When the earth heats up and the sun eats the sky.

Who mourns for creatures with names
Like the Harlequin Frog,
Or the Panamanian Golden Toad?
Surely most people would rather
Squash ‘em and squish ‘em!

Yet these pop-eyed denizens,
With their quiet chorus of “Ribbit!” in the night,
Have been warning us for decades
That the health of our planet is far from right.

In the gray-misted forests a fungus has spread,
And dozens of frog species are turning up dead.
As the sea and air surface temperatures rise,
The fate of the frogs may mean global demise.

Politicians laugh
And call it liberal “pie in the sky”
That the earth heats up,
And the sun eats the sky.

But the littlest beings have added their voice
To such drumbeats of doom,
We may not have a choice.
If we listen and learn,
We can still change our ways,
Otherwise our behavior will number our days.

The once-mighty glaciers retreat every day,
And polar bears starve as their homes melt away.
The season of hurricanes never stops storming,
While the ozone hole confirms global warming.

As the frogs disappear and the rivers run dry,
The forests burn up and whole species will die,
And those of us left will hear Nature’s last cry
As the earth overheats and the sun eats the sky.