A sonnet for my nephew Dan and his younger generation
 
By climate change, it seems, our coffee beans are threatened –
The heat, it’s too oppressive; there’s no drying season.
Thank God for new technology and all our innovations!
(The engines of climate change, I’m still on Earth to mention.)

My kitchen, meanwhile, my hurried hunches scorns;
My flavors metagrobolize, with messes left to mourn.
And if I linger with texts or with paintings I detest . . .
All my certainties (and yours) time’s ready to de-bless!

Our science and our planning to control imperfect fate . . .
(An oxymoron worth recognizing before it’s too late?)
If your leaps, however magical, keep dumping you on your face,
Facades, leaping and magic might lose some of their taste.

And some careful readers might my wisdom call in question,
And thus stumble quite precisely upon my suggestion.

— Poem and still life (not of coffee beans) by William Eaton

§ In response to: The race to save coffee: America’s favorite beverage is under attack from climate change and other woes. Science may offer a solution.” By Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post, October 19, 2017. From the story:

Climate change could spell disaster for coffee, a crop that requires specific temperatures to flourish and that is highly sensitive to a range of pests. So scientists are racing to develop more tenacious strains of one of the world’s most beloved beverages. . . .

“The major concern of the industry is that the quantity, and even the future, of good coffee is threatened by climate change,” said Benoit Bertrand, an agronomist with the French agricultural research group CIRAD and one of the world’s most respected coffee breeders. “So the question becomes: How can we address this with new technology and new innovations?”