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
