Language & Ecology, 2017
A simple proposition (set to scenes
Of rough humanoids gathered at lake’s edge
Before the settled, the certain.) It means
More when you calculate than when you hedge
Innocuous harvest fueled by looped genes
Measured in millennia. There they are
Beside the water at sun’s death, narrow-
Eyed and top-heavy, hands ready: sand bar
Dug for clamshells, clay shelf leveled, sparrow
Wings braided with ligament and reed. Far
From harmonic, even those early days
Culled too many from passing herd, black stone
Chipped into arrows. Move through, move on, ways
Laid down with swift acquisition. Crack bone
Into marrow, scrape last hides for warmth, blaze
Routes of other mammals from tracks alone
To memory. No one paid the keeper’s
Fee. No one paused to mourn the clean river’s
Run, the dodo’s bright yellow eye. Cheaper
Still, twist intent to thrive. Hunt delivers
Food, shelter, commerce, power, growth—features
Best aligned with raw cosmic expansion
Than one blue marble’s fragile barrier
Against the rot. Considered chance? Branch in
From guileless root. Become the carrier
Pigeon’s first sleek hope. Re-write deft scansion
From flushed water’s fringe, internecine howl
Drowned by new music. Listen for accord
Drenched in wearing one another’s scars, cowl
Peeled back. Give and give (its own sweet reward):
Empathy replaces predator’s prowl.
Flint (Monday January 25 2016)
No. That’s how it began, phone
Call or face to failure. Flint is
Not a political football. Flint’s
Poison flow is a dry
Stick of dynamite tucked
In a bed of kindling
Nested at the bottom of a dead
Oak tree at the edge
Of a drought-weary wood.
Yes. We are ‘anti-everything.’
We are anti-children-growing
Up-in-chemical-induced-
Downward-social-
Mobility, anti-local-economic/
Environmental/social-
Deconstruction