creative writing on environmental justice
the night of the windstorm
the city swayed
steel branches wrapped in old concrete
the leaves fall in strict equations:
material tolerance plus environmental
pressure plus the work of builders’ hands.
in the morning, we count cracks:
birch lines in the drywall laid bare
for the deer. the corner panhandler lost
his hat in the night. spare . . .
I hear the drum beating.
What is it saying in the heartbeat of the world
other than look at the earth?
And the earth is there,
and the earth is always there.
I was conceived in Cades Cove
in the Smoky Mountains. In a tent.
Aren’t we always in a tent?
The red tent, the biblical tent,
the tent from other books I was never taught
that are also holy. I was conceived
in . . .
Not long after the election, when the left had failed
to reassure the broken hearted,
and the broken hearted had elected a lunatic
out of spite, I kayaked out to where the light
had never been torn,
to watch the darkness gathering
in the mountains’ seams.
Cool rain on flat seas, ducks ahead of me,
white trails of their wings beating water
as they fled. Fresh . . .
Our houses are decaying plants wait to take control no they don’t wait they ceaseless
send their rootlings along the soil’s pathways wheedling their limbs unwind . . .
Kestrel: (from French crécerelle, derivative from crécelle, i.e. ratchet)
Also known as windhover because he can hover, even in still air, but when he
hovers he usually faces toward a breeze, no matter how slight.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote
Dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / of the rolling level underneath him steady air . . . . . . .
Somewhere from the diagrammatic stolon
of overgrown seagrasses, a voice carries
to the surface—to live radical compassion,
not just speak of it. The spiders still have not forgiven
me. The fish kill cited in the civil suit just a bead
in the course of stories scrolling by in my palm
like air pockets in rain—over 600,000 displaced
in Sri Lanka, two hundred dead . . .
The land knows
what we refuse to learn:
sometimes you must destroy
what has come before to create
new, unsullied things.
***
There are places my feet have trod
that are gone
never to be loved again.
The fire consumes
slowly, with enough time to flee
yet still relentless in remaking.
***
The ash like snow, blankets
the black . . .
for Michael J DeLuca
How can I write you this letter
through thick smoke the sun
a red dot in the sky
I should not be able to stare into
How can I make an appointment
with the car dealer
while mother Tahlequah takes
her tour of duty displaying for us
hairless monkeys what the rest
of the natural world already knows . . .
When the long drought comes,
scorches the hands of the healers
will we bandage them
with clean white gauze
so they can continue their work
and when kindness faces starvation
will we look into our pantries
and gather, quickly
to feed her
when the winds come
raging and spitting
and buildings begin to buckle
at the knees,
will we rush to the labs
swing open all . . .
First, we made sure the world was devoid of sentient inhabitants.
Its turquoise skies grew greener (we thought) as summer waned.
On the wine-dark sand we drew diagrams and planted pennants:
a cultural center here, a spa or hotel there, on an imaginary beach.
At least one of the suns was always rising, and the light perfect
for filming, as if the planet were a vast, . . .