Motor-City Earth Day Rant

Here is my Earth-Day poem (my computer is still down, so this is hard):

Motor City Earth-Day Rant

In a city where big cars rumble down cracked and broken streets
and big bulldozers grind stolen homes
to dust and leave our most vulnerable

homeless,
dandelions remember spring
and bloom abundantly in the highway medians,
glorious galaxies of stars, born of stardust.

In a city of huge cars, huge industry

and huge pollution
where a new McDonald's rises on our corner,
robins remember spring,
hop on toothpick legs
and search for worms among the trash.

In a city of gigantic cars,
where little minds believe bigger is better
and expensive is the same as quality,
crabapples blossom,
pink as cotton candy.
and just as sweet.

In a city of ridiculously huge cars
where tiny minds care more for the bottom line
than for the earth and its power to sustain us,
our children and our grandchildren,
magnolias drop their petals on intentionally poisoned lawns.

In a city where rum-runners drove across
a frozen river to Canada,
swallows return and skim the water for the insects
that would otherwise bite us,
unless the powerful poisoned the insects,
the swallows
and us
into oblivion.

In a city with the biggest cars on earth,
I stand at the pulpit and preach to the choir.  
The powerless listen
to poetry and song
while the powerful
destroy.
But if we stand together, side by side, speaking
as they say, truth to power, perhaps someone will listen
and things will change

or perhaps the powerful will mow us down and go on killing,
poisoning their children and grandchildren, and ours,
poisoning dandelions, robins and crabapples,
the water we drink
the air we breathe
and the food we eat
for the sake of their almighty dollar.

Look around.  Dogwoods and tulips blossom
while invisible toxic fallout
from industry and testing seeps silently
into the our air, into the grass and trees
and onto the cookies we serve to celebrate the earth
while their greed and our apathy
take turns shoveling a grave for the human race
to bury itself in forever.

If when we destroy ourselves, the earth survives

if we leave anything at all
to the rest of the biosphere,
if the earth still has the strength and power to heal itself,
it may be better off without
the greedy and apathetic,
better off
without us.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
120422-1031-4d(10), 120421-1654-3d(6), 120420-1513-2a, 120417 1st