He says, “If you were told

the human race had 7 years

left to live,

what would you do?”

It’s 27 degrees again,

‘Dust Haze Deluxe’

the coffee flavour

of the discerning COP delegate.

We ride tiny Tesla boats

through swirling concrete currents

in a city shitting skyscrapers,

think up and up

through see-through ceilings,

glide past oil fields

squatting behind electric peacock trains.

In Expo City we are funnelled

like hamsters in a pinball machine,

moving without moving,

perspective has been tampered with.

I never thought it was possible

to get vertigo on the ground.

He waves his fork at the next table

where Exxon lobbyists

scoop hummus onto triangles of bread.

So do we.

“They won’t be able to live here

in 30 years’, he says.

‘This whole region will be a fan oven.”

He tells me he is planting

underwater gardens in the Arctic,

grafting coral,

letting citizens dive down to seed sea grass.

We celebrate the Mangrove Breakthrough,

toast 15 million hectors with 7UP.

“Things are changing’ he says,

‘no one is waiting for the politicians,

finance is flowing…

but it’s too late…”

His words are throwing stars

but his eyes are luminous submarines,

submerged in deep moving currents.

I push my sandals into the shiny sidewalk,

pummel the invisible break pedal

through the lead in my stomach,

through my children’s futures.

‘If we can just slow it down.’

 

The corporates are mobilising,

high heels click across marble and lino.

‘What does 1.5 degrees look like?’

branded on their perfect teeth.

I follow them into PowerPoints,

lose my head in acronyms and carrot/stick cliches,

stumble out of half empty pavilions

blinking in bright sun.

Anna tells me, she is climbing

into campus clothes bins across LA,

taking selfies on the unworn leather pants

rich girls can’t be bothered to return.

Her thrift-shop slow-fashion business

booming.

I ask her what she would do

if nothing could stop her?

“Nothing can stop me!”, she says.

That’s what it‘s like here,

more problem solvers than insects.

Einstein’s and oxymorons

shooting up adrenaline

in the climate stripes.

Cristina wears her smile

like she’s just found it.

In the Spanish mountains of her hometown

they only have water for four hours a day now.

She protested when they cut down

forests for supermarkets.

Her friends said,

“Why bother – just enjoy your life…”

So, she left.

I watch her chatting to policy makers

in plastic chairs

like all the light belongs to her,

UN badge glinting.

Delegates from Senegal, China, Pakistan, Cameroon

wander in and sit by the fire

we have made with our words.

Everyone has a superhero origin story

for the sharing,

a message from their homeland,

blood on their treasure maps.

100,000 people in the shed

at the bottom of the UAE,

trying to fix the lawnmower,

make it run on hope and Chinese solar power,

while snake oil sellers gather outside

like the witches from Macbeth.

There are journalists talking into microwaves,

“This is the most complicated lawnmower

in human history” one says.

Another says, “Stop cutting the grass you cretins!”.

We have been handing out haiku cards

like clues to a thousand quests.

Each poem a tiny prophecy.

People grab them with their eyes closed,

open them into mirrors.

Serendipity is slinky here,

every chance meeting a fork in a lay line.

An Italian climate analyst

repeats the last line of his haiku

over and over

until his pizza arrives.

 

‘No wings, no curtain.

The great stage in an atom.

Life is your ticket’.

“Life is your ticket”.

7 years is not long enough,

we all know it…

but this is the place where 7 impossible things

happen before lunch

and every elevator ride

is 10 floors higher than the last.

In Dubai airport,

3,500 miles from my front door,

I sit next to a man who lives two streets away,

whose kids go to the same school.

And I have to wonder why

when you run towards a fire

the rain falls in beside you?

Every day in the Northern hemisphere

we get up, intent on making those 7 years count.

When we go to bed,

millions of scientists, activists, artists,

rise in the Southern Hemisphere

with the urgent sun

to do the same.

The fight for human survival

is global

and never sleeps.

Science is poetry.

Strategy is magic.

Life is your ticket

and tipping points

go the other way too.

Liv Torc (C) 2024