Category: Environment
We Are All Mostly Water
WINDMILL FARMS
WINDMILL FARMS
How many will it take to keep this thing in the air
WE ARE ALL MOSTLY WATER
WE ARE ALL MOSTLY WATER
It rains on the ocean too
and sometimes you cry in the shower
The water don’t care unless you love it
and can see in each drop
the seed of the snowflake resting
PRAYERS
PRAYERS
The frogs out back
are singing in the rain
Not like Gene Kelly
in the actual raining now
More like the brave
in Remington’s painting
standing alone on a hill
skull raised above his head
trying to conjure back the buffalo
Last week it worked for the frogs
BROTHERS
BROTHERS
We clean the pond
the better to see
the multi-colored Koi
The better to meditate upon
their seeming happy life
No evidence of any urge
to grow legs adapt lungs
and join us in the race
OIL SPILL
OIL SPILL
Another oil spill
watching the spreading Rorschach
we see ourselves
TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES
TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES
or BACK TO THE GARDEN
It is mid November
and there are Monarchs
everywhere
at our new Texas home
It takes five generations
each way for them to get
from Mexico to Canada
and back
(Stan said so, and he
would know)
About sixty years ago
we lived for a year or two
at my grandfather’s farm
He had a garden
A Canadian national treasure
(The newspapers all said so)
Ten thousand trees planted
on the bald-assed prairie
rich with fruit and flowers
no one else would even test
that far north and west
I watch generation nine or ten
lightly and unerringly
almost home again
and feel his DNA
happily spinning
in every cell
WITH APOLOGIES TO DAVID SUZUKI
WITH APOLOGIES TO DAVID SUZUKI
In the center of
a great Pacific gyre
fridges, bottles, nets and wire
circling like a rotting tire
a fast expanding garbage heap
larger than the state of Texas
and a hundred meters deep
Plastic choking bird and beast
who in error on it feast
A concept difficult to grasp
especially when forcing rhymes
It helps to think of a woman’s purse
multiplied a hundred million times
HOME
HOME
The salt of your tears
is not without power
If you should cry
in a river
It will think
it has already
reached the sea