Reflection

When I was growing up, I used to see snow every winter. I have always loved playing in the snow with my friends, from building snowmans to having snowball fights, and I always cherished the magical moments in the white landscape. Yet, climate change has induced irregular weather patterns. For the past few years, I barely saw a trace of snow during the winter, and the nostalgic pang I felt for my childhood winters motivated me to create this poem. I wanted to put my story in the form of a poem because of the power for poems to appeal to the readers’ pathos. I also implemented erasure poetry to add a deeper meaning to my climate story. In my poem, I talked about my memories of snow, and I also weaved in sources fueling climate change, such as fossil fuel emissions and our general ignorance of climate change. Towards the end of the poem, I incorporated actionable steps to combat climate change, which I hope would incentivize my audience to implement the specific actions on a personal level in order for us to solve the ongoing climate crisis.