For crows. For the robins bathing in my potholes. For cacti, for succulents, for shade. For the 7.5 billion people on this planet competing for access to fresh air, clean water, nourishing food, good love, and safe housing. For the planet’s three trillion trees, for the sheer improbability of trees. For the fewer than 30,000 monarchs left in the world. For the milkweed seeds my brother gave me. For my brothers and their young sons, whose laughter I hope remains a sparking ember, even in the precarious future. For my boyfriend’s ex-wife, who could never give up a child. For her children, who will have less competition for their father’s resources. For hard facts and soft sheets. For slow mornings over coffee after bountiful sleep. For my savings account. For my cats. For everyone who tears up their lawn to plant pollinator gardens. For everyone at the farmer’s market. For everyone who thinks I shouldn’t have this choice and their children and their children’s children. For the eighty Sumatran rhinos. For the 24,000 organic farms in the United States. For goats, the event horizon of their eyes. For last night’s full moon, for the dream of a gray horse. For silence, long books, and writing poems. For friendships nurtured over vast distances. For friends offering music, money, and muscle despite said distances. For Illinois, where I was born, whose state laws still treat me like an adult making an informed decision. For my home of Tennessee and its companion states that infantilize women, making them wait eighteen to twenty-four hours for their abortions after a consultation. For the women persisting in these states, bright and indomitable as zinnias. For zinnias, lavender, and honeybees. For my ankles, my breasts, my hips. For freedom. For generosity. For forests. For the recovering manatee population, the spread of bald eagles. For coral, for whales, for sharks, and foxes. For trickster myths and centipedes. For the finches nesting under my porch eave, their chicks’ slender squeaks unhitching their beaks. For you. For this morning. For me, for me, for me.
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Amie Whittemore is the author of the poetry collection Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press). Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is the Reviews Editor for Southern Indiana Review and teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.

Photo by Mike McKniff