Tag Archives: earth

I Know Why the Aliens Don’t Land Here

If there really are aliens,
I know why they don’t land here
And say, “Hello,”
And develop a cultural-exchange program.
They have zoomed around in saucers
And watched us from afar,
Studying our habits,
Observing how we live.
They’ve seen us clear-cut and toxify and exterminate.
They zoom around in saucers now,
Filled with unruly alien children
And pointing at us from afar,
At how we clear-cut and toxify and exterminate.
If there really are aliens,
I know why they don’t land here:
We are their “Scared Straight Program.”

***

In My Dreams the Trees Can Run

In my dreams the trees can run:
They flee before the chainsaws come,
No more standing brave and rigid,
Holding their breath in stoic silences
While Killers of Life cut them off at the knees
And convert them to resources.
In my dreams the trees can run:
They hide like Jews in basements and cellars
while Killers of Life march the streets
With beady eyes scouring windows for
brief flashes of green
They hide a short time huddled together
until the world is safe,
And the Era of the Killers is over.
In my dreams the trees can run:
And the Killers of Life cut each other to pieces.

***

Once Upon Returning Home

Once upon returning home
I found a trailer park where forests had stood,
Cans of humans, shiny and regimented,
Built over corpses of fallen birch and oak,
Dark and vital earth landscaped into lawns
with chain-link fences and plastic sunflowers,
The stench of greasy fast-food bags in car trunks
and lawn-mower gasoline,
Re-runs with laugh tracks seeping out windows
where frogs and crickets once prophesied.
Up ahead in the street, under the glow of halogens,
Crooked fingers of wild grass wiggled
through a crack in the pavement,
Mounting a slow, relentless counter-attack,
And in one gentle caress
filled with a childhood of memory
I whispered to these struggling survivors:
“They can’t get us all.”

***

A Handful of Leaves

A prayer for the children of the next Neolithic,
That we leave to them
A field of lilies where a WalMart once stood,
Salmon upstream from the ruins of a dam,
Kudzu vines embracing skeletons of skyscrapers,
Cracked and overgrown ribbons of nameless super-highways.
A prayer for the children of the next Neolithic,
That you may
Lay entwined in fields of lilies,
Sustain yourselves on sister salmon,
Climb the vines of kudzu to shelter,
Salt meat on the remains of the highway,
And use this poem for kindling at sundown
So you can spare a handful of leaves
Where the gods write poetry of their own.

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