creative writing on environmental justice
try to keep yourself—somehow—
tied: to the earth, perhaps—find joints
and sinews that echo your own in
the tree across the water, discover
home in the shelter of hedges or trace
a life down the edges of the river.
please, remember to stay tied:
maybe in her tender touch,
or in the glance shared—across an
expanse or two meters. above all—
i’ll keep repeating—be tied: hear the strings
plucked so far away, feel the echo, count
your luck to be here, to be bound, and know
how easy it is to be found.
a comforting thought: that
the arc of the moral universe
is long, but it appears to bend
towards crabs. one day, our
exoskeletons will protect us
from the rain, and from the end;
as the seas rise and fall, we will
find homes in the tide pools, or in
the remnants of buildings left empty
by humans. we will build
a better world, as crabs; they say
crabs can’t feel pain. we’ll never
hurt, or perhaps we won’t believe
convenient claims which salve
our guilt over boiling creatures alive.