If We Are the Disease

I visited earth's heart yesterday.
Her moss-covered arteries shimmered with golden leaf-lace.
An afternoon visit,
  hushed intimate moments splashed with humanity -
    laughing children, barking dogs,
    jogging women, strolling couples,
    a chattering family taking selfies
  in the strong, thick arms of an ancient, overturned root.

I rested my hand on the naked trunk
of a bark-stripped tree
scarred with initials and hearts.

I love you,
  I said to the wild world.
Do what you must.

If we are the disease, do what you must
to heal your battered soil-fed heart.
You are worth more than all of us.

One thousand years from now,
you will find a way
for the best of who we are
to live on in you.

It won't be
a selfie.

Bloom Like the Wildflowers

Bloom like the wildflowers,
as if you had no choice.
This wreck of a world deserves
rampant beauty and cascading love
and desire that scorches the flagrant banners of cruelty.
When did we lock our hearts in cages?

Our true hungers hide in our minds' cages
building machines to devour wildflowers.
These are the fruits of a nation's cruelty.
Don't pretend that the subjects of tyrants have no choice.
Songbirds and honeybees can still feed on the remnants of love
and build the intricate homes that the earth deserves.

A bare floor and a cold cell is all that a man deserves
when he turns away from children sobbing in cages.
How can this stark wilderness grow love
when our  combat boots trample children and wildflowers?
Count the moments on your rosary. Each one is a choice,
a momentous leap, a tango between kindness and cruelty.

When a tiger devours its prey, is that cruelty?
Is animal instinct all that the soul deserves?
How can we call it instinct when we have the power of choice?
Even animals twist into insanity when they are kept in cages.
If we poison monsters and devils, will they vomit up wildflowers?
When they die, can their rot and decay fertilize acts of love?

These days, people sneer at the idea of love
and feed on glorious visions of cruelty.
The streets teem with hatred and nobody hands out wildflowers.
The boiling ocean simmers  - the only soup our failure deserves,
made from the bones of sea-starved whales that become our cages
if we embrace despair and squander choice.

In a moonlit desert, pilgrims wander past the hope of choice,
searching the sands for wisdom, mistaking mirages for love.
This parched place needs no cages.
The landscape is its own cruelty,
a desolate and lonely shrine that no supplicant deserves,
a holy land too harsh for wildflowers.

One day fields and forests may overwhelm our barren cruelty.
The earth's great dance of existence deserves
nothing less than the partner of its choice.

I remember: Pre-apocalypse

I remember when summer's warmth was not
an angry hellish thing
I remember when islands did not drown
and winter did not ravage
when subway tunnels were free of floods
and mountains were covered in snow
and hurricanes and earthquakes and volcanoes
only occasionally laid waste
I remember when apocalypse was a subject
for speculative fiction
and doomsday was a war-born event
that treaties could at once prevent
I remember when humans were not dinosaurs
and water was not poison
and skies were not orange
and fish did not suffocate
and polar bears made sense

Summer, 2018