Tag Archives: environment

Planning for the Future

If these are to be the last of our days
I will tick through them all in slow seconds
never so bleak as to call out the hour
but aware enough to know the minutes.

Every moment respected and cherished
I will stay with them as long as I can
while able to wake, early and witness
these last few sun’s to rise on human eyes.

In our end the sun will not set upon all things
only on all things that include ourselves,
so as we come now to disinherit the earth
let us make it better for those that remain,

for what concern is time when it is good?

Stepping out of the Woods

Trees as thick as grass
bundled together hiding the sky
at night though
stars shine through

One could get lost in there
one could find something profound in there
in the morning
hidden passions
light the canopy like green fire

An untold history crackles beneath feet
crisp with the anxiety of breaking, unresolved
twilight is a pleasant mystery
whispers of color in silent darkness
the fauna changing shifts
timorous insects take flight.

A bright pink cross sanctifies the bark of each tree
some sign of an afterlife that none could imagine
The end is violent and sterile
the ground stripped bare
the canopy pulled back to blue skies
broken by contrails and wires
soon to be hidden in property
too expensive for anyone to live in
just dying slowly,
paycheck to paycheck.

Parliament

Twelve surrounded the table
where once this world was founded
but now was fated to fall
to a council long since sedated

The years dulled their edges
once sharp minds lulled
by dreams of static nostalgia;
nothing new could mute the old fantastic.

When the end stood before them
to be judged for all its ill and its good
they refused to name if for what it was
and searched amongst themselves for explanation

Thus, in deliberation, the world ended
not in the soft sobered silence of rumination
nor the enraged cacophony of rebellion
but with all the grace of a madman caged

knowing only himself with whom to confer

A Flag Flipped at Half Mast

Roughly hewn bold shoulders pierce clouds
hearing through the soft cotton of the sky
in an eternal attempt to deny
the cost which time at length enshrouds
a history of chaos caught in contortions
the passing days a gentle rain in the ocean

Where the transient will see might
the ageless will recall violent trauma
millions of years in tectonic drama
to break the skin with vicious spite
resigned to the cosmos. Never to move again
until at last these same forces push them to their end.

They quake with anticipation
an unbearable anxiety
that brings them within reach of piety
at the expense of damnation
the earth a parchment on which will be writ its dirge
should the progenitor finally emerge

By the time that day came to pass
the monster spoke with fire now set free,
“I give to the world what it took from me,”
buried it in molten and ash
then, at last, returned to the earth from which it came
never knowing it had itself to blame.

The Mountains are Silver with Winter’s Leavings

  Black pines                         the moon weeps
to see them drag that thing screaming
                           a bundle of noise
             given agency in sound
                           such luxuries are deceiving

                           Red lights│
                                        blue│
                           silver strobes of tinsel

                          The colors slip over the tilled snow
             like a long gown dragged over the stairs
they whisper beneath the fugue of fear
             those concerned cries calling out for a close ear
                           for someone who cares.

But the sound is too loud
             it bludgeons empathy

Pity the trees that must stay
             to witness such horrors
                           ever protesting in the wind
                                        but unable to look away.

Without Justice Odysseus is Abandoned

[Axioms drown the truth
we annexed the world
before we adopted reason
Reason we left abandoned]

[Orphaned from brutal parentage
another Odysseus sold away
and forgotten once convenient
Achilles left raging onward]

[Journey’s end approaches soon;
know justice lives on
our death just confirms
we have no jurisdiction]

[Where is the future?
the world moves on
ever forward without us.
Relieved, the world weeps]

Appalachia (photo by Valerius Tygart)

Look off into the stoic mountains
the stubborn, biting and cold mountains

There they’ve stood for centuries unmoved
as if born already old mountains

Cutting through the landscape like trauma
the earth exposed by these bold mountains

history stretched past the horizon
tales of violence that molds mountains

that humbled all life to fire and ash.
Let the next species behold mountains

ours spent their lives trying to break them
but only aeons can fold mountains.