As the planet grapples with the relentless pulse of climate change, poetry emerges as both elegy and witness, capturing the impermanence of seasonal rhythms. Eco-poetry, a genre rooted in ecological consciousness, has increasingly turned its gaze toward the fleeting splendor of natural transitions-from the reluctant thaw of winter to the cautious bloom of spring, the waning warmth of summer, and the uncertain stillness of autumn. These poems do more than describe; they mourn, resist, and revere the worlds fading into the shadows of human impact.

The Fragility of Spring's Awakening

Spring, once a symbol of renewal, becomes a fragile promise in poems like "Thaw" by Linda Hogan, where melting ice whispers "a secret the earth can no longer keep." Modern eco-poets frame the season's arrival not as a jubilant return but as an uneasy pause-cherry blossoms erupting too early, migratory birds arriving to find mismatched ecosystems. In Craig Santos Perez's "Elegy for the dongsi", the poet laments Hawaii's vanishing springtime flora, weaving endangered species names into verses that tremble like petals in unseasonal winds. Each stanza becomes a plea: "What blooms when the calendar forgets its seasons?"

Summer's Fading Melody

The heat of summer, once vibrant, now hums with foreboding. In "Heatwave" by Evelyn Araluen, fireflies flicker "like dying stars in asphalt skies," their light swallowed by urban sprawl and rising temperatures. Poets like Araluen blend personal memory with collective loss, painting picnics under withering trees and oceans choked with coral ghosts. Even the cicada's song-a rhythmic pulse of July-becomes a dirge in these works, its crescendo drowned by the static of climate denial. Yet amidst the despair, there is reverence: the sweat-drenched skin, the last wild berry, the children wading through drought-stricken streams-all etched into verse with urgent tenderness.

Autumn's Tarnished Gold

Frost no longer arrives with precision. In "Third Autumn Without Maples" by Ocean Vuong, the transformation of leaves is "a slow bruise, purpled by toxins in the soil." Eco-poets dissect autumn's decay not as a natural cycle but as an indictment-forests gasping from invasive pests, orchards collapsing mid-harvest, geese veering off ancient flight paths. Yet there is beauty in the wreckage. Kiese Laymon's "Appalachian Ode" finds solace in the "crimson defiance" of a lone maple, its roots tangled with mushrooms that decompose both debris and trauma. These poems insist on seeing the world as it fractures: "We count the seeds even as the tree falls."

Winter's Uncertain Silence

What remains when snow refuses to settle? In "Ghost Sleighs" by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the absence of frost becomes a metaphor for erasure-stories, languages, and ecosystems vanishing without trace. Poems depict icy lakes as fractured mirrors, polar bears shrinking into the distance, and children who have "never known a December without mud." Yet winter's silence is not empty. Layli Long Soldier's "Where Winter Knows My Name" listens to the hush between storms, finding Indigenous kinship practices that "thawed long before the first snow"-a reminder that resilience, too, is seasonal.

Conclusion: poetry as a Climate Archive

The poems of Seasons in Shadow do not romanticize nature's cycles; they dissect their unraveling. By grounding abstract data-temperature charts, extinction rates-in the intimate world of petals, ice, and breath, these works make the crisis visceral. They are climate archives in verse, preserving the ache of fleeting beauty before it slips beyond memory. To read them is to stand at the threshold of seasons that may never return, to feel the weight of what we risk losing-and, perhaps, to imagine what might still be saved.