On Climate Change by Andrea Gibson
By Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Hello listeners, I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m grateful to share a poem with you by incredible human, Andrea Gibson.
Gibson was a poet, performer, activist, and Colorado’s ninth poet laureate. They were the author of seven poetry collections, and seven albums of spoken word and performance poetry. Gibson was a four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion and the winner of many awards and honors, including the gold medal for poetry from the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Originally from Maine, Gibson relocated to Boulder in 1999 where they lived until their death from ovarian cancer on July 14, 2025. They were 49 years old. Gibson and their wife Megan Falley are the subjects of the spectacular documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, which followed them as they navigated Gibson's terminal cancer diagnosis. It won the Festival Film Favorite Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
I wish we could have had Andrea on this earth for another 49 years…but we’re so, so lucky that they graced us with their presence at all. Here’s Gibson’s poem, “Climate Change.”
CLIMATE CHANGE
You’ve been driving in circles all day
on the backroads through the farmlands
where everything is so close to the earth
the silos look like skyscrapers.
It’s been weeks since the first breath
of winter, and the geese are just beginning
to make their long trip south. They fly
in a perfect > but they do not think
what is ahead of them is greater or less than
what is behind them. That, you are certain,
is the definition of peace. But you have not known
peace in many months, since the day
your love’s shoulder turned cold.
You were standing in the kitchen the first time
you noticed the temperature dropping. A storm front
rolled across her face. Ice forming in her once-warm tone.
You had no idea what was happening.
It was a season you had never seen.
Everything before then–summer. Years of her
grabbing your hand and pulling you toward
a teal August sea. Looking back, you think
if you’d had just one week of autumn, if
you’d seen even a single leaf turn
from green to red, you might have been
prepared. Might have even thought it natural.
Everything you know about climate change
insists the sudden shifts are what’s most dangerous.
It was eighty degrees one day and below freezing
the next. You turn onto Maple Bridge Road
just as another flock of geese lands on a half-frozen lake.
Geese can migrate 1,200 miles in a single day.
If you drove through the night, you could too.
It’s not a thought but an instinct. A knowing
that you aren’t built to survive this kind of cold.
Where will you go? a friend on the phone asks.
Somewhere warm, you say, and if it were years
earlier, you know that somewhere would be
a someone. But you’re done making vacations
out of people. You want a permanent home.
You want decades of her teasing you for folding
her sundresses terribly. Geese, unlike many birds,
do not fly south at the first cold breeze. They wait
until they are nearly buried by the blizzard. They stay
until they can’t find one last edible seed. That day
in the kitchen when the ponds of her eyes froze,
you started skating a figure 8 across them, over
and over, trying to etch infinity back into what she saw
when she looked at you. But visibility is drastically reduced
in a storm, and it has not stopped snowing, so staying
may no longer be an option. But before you go,
remember the weather almost never shifts
this suddenly by itself. You’ve scoured the soil
for her carbon footprint a thousand times,
but have you scoured it for yours? Not to go
looking for shame but to know your own
impact. And can you do that without deciding
you are a poison in the air? Before you leave,
put those questions on the map. Love yourself
enough to go there.
Used with Permission
This poem expertly weaves together several evergreen poetic themes: birds, weather, and heartbreak. It’s also filled with Gibson’s trademark vivid and inventive images and language, and the tenor of grief is artfully carried by the vehicle of climate change. I love the way this poem breathes; it expands to consider the enormity of climate disaster, the vastness of earth, and then contracts to focus on a V of geese in a winter sky, on the cold eyes of a lover we’re losing.
I also admire Gibson’s use of the second person here: it’s immediate, literally putting us in the driver’s seat as we’re ushered through a rural reckoning, a low-slung sky carrying the weight and worry of our impending grief. But we’re not off the hook for our own shortcomings, for the role we’ve played in this catastrophe: the poem asks us to take stock of our footprints, too. But “not to go looking for shame,” Gibson says, an important distinction between guilt and grievance; instead, we’re asked simply to understand our influence. What better lesson to take away from tragedy than to know our own power, possibility, and responsibility.
Thank you, Andrea, for your resonant work that continues to make waves in the world. We miss you.
And thank you for listening to Poets on the Plains. I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, coming to you from Eagle, Colorado.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award in poetry. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tucson Festival of Books, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley. She and her husband spend most of their time tending to our animal menagerie, keeping houseplants alive, and exploring the BLM trails near their home.https://www.alyssemccanna.com/
FEATURED POET
Andrea Gibson was an American poet, performer, activist, and Colorado’s ninth poet laureate. Gibson was the author of several poetry collections, including You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021). They won awards and honors such as first place for poetry in the 2023 Feathered Quill Book Awards and the gold medal for poetry in the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Gibson edited We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), an anthology of poems that address social justice issues. In addition to their literary achievements, Gibson released seven albums of spoken word and performance poetry, was a four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion, and was featured on international platforms such as the BBC, C-SPAN, and Air America. Originally from Calais, Maine, Gibson relocated to Boulder, Colorado in 1999 where they lived until their death from ovarian cancer on July 14, 2025. https://andreagibson.org/
