Category: Environment

TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES

Environment, Nature, Relationships, Travel / tagged , , , , / / by

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

Environment, Nature / / by

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

REVENGE OF THE TREES

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature / / by

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

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ODE TO O2

Audio Recordings, Environment / tagged / / by

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

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JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature, Poems about Poetry / tagged , , / / by

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

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CHERNOBYL

Audio Recordings, Environment, String Too Short To Save / tagged / / by

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

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BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA

Audio Recordings, Environment / tagged , , / / by

BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA

The red man mines his life for irony
while the white man tears the earth for iron

But treaties protect the sacred stones
as long as rivers flow and grass grow
Paper covers rock
in the Black Hills of Dakota

Gold in the Black Hills, end of treaty
Scissors cut paper
in the Black Hills of Dakota

But sacred stones outlive them all
Rock breaks scissors
in the Black Hills of Dakota

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LAWYER RAP

Audio Recordings, Environment, Poems about Poetry / / by

LAWYER RAP
(or I SUED TWO LAWYERS FOR 18 MONTHS AND ALL I GOT WAS ONE RAP POEM)

The road to trials
is paved with miles and miles and miles and miles
of files and files and files and files

Piles and piles and piles and piles
of files and files and files and files

And I’m going down that road
wading through piles and piles and piles
plowing through files and files and files

And I think of all these pile of files and files
used to be trees and trees and trees and trees

And maybe these trees – some of these trees
came from woods where Robert Frost walked
the woods where paths in the wood diverged
and where he took the one less traveled

And I wonder how I got on this path
and how to get back to that place
back to that place in the woods
back where the paths diverge

Spend my days outside instead
walking through live trees
live trees instead of dead
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I AM A PELICAN

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature / tagged , , , , , / / by

I AM A PELICAN

I have flown over the dinosaurs dying
through the ash of the meteors crashing

I have swam in the ice floes melting
I have eaten the first fish walking

I have felt the poles a shifting
in the magnets in my head

I have seen the white man and the red
I have seen the old wives dead

I have felt the pull of the settlers need
and tasted the poisons of their greed

I have heard the earth a groaning
I have felt the earth in pain

I have seen the Rainbow Warriors
dance the vision back again

And I fly and swim and wait
and pray they’re not too late

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