Category: Environment

TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES

Environment, Nature, Relationships, Travel / tagged , , , , / / by

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

Environment, Nature / / by

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

REVENGE OF THE TREES

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature / / by

REVENGE OF THE TREES

There will come a time – maybe soon

When you have cut down and burned
so many of us that we will no longer
be able to give enough of our gift
to burn any more

Not nearly enough for combustion
in internal combustion engines
of chainsaws and D9 cats

It is true you will still have
your double bitted axe
and cross cut saw

But there may a be a problem
with the breath