Fruit flies exposed
to many dead fruit flies
lose their fat stores,
die more quickly
than those kept naive.
I who have lived long now
and will die of my living,
not of my grief,
and more than once
from a public garden
stole roses—
red ones and pink ones,
scented and not—
stammer before these
troubled and truthful fruit flies.
This poem appears in the October 2026 print edition.
Fruit flies exposed
to many dead fruit flies
lose their fat stores,
die more quickly
than those kept naive.
I who have lived long now
and will die of my living,
not of my grief,
and more than once
from a public garden
stole roses—
red ones and pink ones,
scented and not—
stammer before these
troubled and truthful fruit flies.
This poem appears in the October 2026 print edition.
On January 24, 2017, the poet Jane Hirshfield was boiling mad. Five days into Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration had cut mentions of climate change from its website; in several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, employees were forbidden from speaking publicly about their research without authorization.