A Long-Held Breath

They would turn it all to smoke.

The caribou roaming beneath Denali,

the whole length of the salmon run,

all creatures great and small;

They would see the wind ferrying the cumulonimbus over the Everglades,

shading flamingos and alligators alike

raining on the permanent and migrant residents, both,

and they would turn it all to smoke.

They would look out from the giant we call Cadillac's height

upon the place we claimed as Acadia

a coastline of intrepid evergreens, kissing the sea -

the majesty of this world we do not own -

and they would turn it all to smoke.

And for what?

A few billion fistfuls

of a far hollower shade of green?

*

One day soon they will look over

the fields which they have scorched

and the species they have eradicated,

the people they have trampled

and the lives they have shattered

and they will see it all turned to smoke -

less than a breath on the wind.

*

And one day soon they will look over

at the luxuries they have amassed,

the beds and boats,

castles and moats,

the commas and zeroes and ones

on the jittering screens of their bank apps,

and they will see it all turned to smoke -

less than a breath on the wind.

*

And one day soon they will look down

at their veined and dying hands, curled in fists,

quaking from the strain

of crushing, and caging,

and hoarding, and aging

and ending -

and they will see it all turned to smoke -

less than a breath on the wind.

*

And yet one day,

long after this requiem age has passed,

amidst the ash of the forgotten things,

from a soil rich beyond imagining,

something green will emerge again,

tender, real, aching with hope -

and it will look over a world of smoke-turned things,

and with a gentle strength, that which grows

will unmake all of the unmaking.

*

And it seems to me this sort of poem will never move

the people whom it is most about.

but if you can be, be moved, reader -

shake and save the mountains with a song of change;

rustle and rescue the trees with a waterfall of words, and more -

that power would one day kneel again before kindness, its rightful king,

and the order of things turn back,

and the forgotten things -

among them dodos,

carrier pigeons,

and consciences -

chart their courses back home

on the wind of justice's long-held breath.