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
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
Another oil spill
watching the spreading Rorschach
we see ourselves
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
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
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
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
ODE TO O2
You used to be able to drink the water
someone poisoned it
now you buy it at the corner store
There used to be oxygen in the air
someone poisoned it
not you buy it at the corner bar
You used to be able to plant a plant
someone patented it
JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK
When it rains in Biggar Saskatchewan
a bigger battle begins
Grass and grain sucking straws
to the slurping point
The sun trying as always to extract
far more than its fair tithe
Muddy waters swirling down drains
of gopher and badger holes
Settling through hollows of buffalo wallows
where the buffalo no longer roam
Remainders feeding underground streams
and deep raging rivers
If I put my feet or my ear to the ground
I can almost understand her last poem
Almost hear the next one
CHERNOBYL
Nature breaking free of science
floats its angry cloud to Red Square
Science in self defense – seeds the clouds
A gentle rain falls with the deadly ash
No one is harmed, if you don’t count
trees and peasants