Another poem in evolution…when is a poem done? It’s so much like painting!
Arid-zona Gardening
Find a kinder way to file your complaint with the universe.
This directive jotted on the flap of an envelope,
left like a trail of seeds
to lead me back
towards the origins of the thought.
The communiqué’s destiny
the overflowing recycling beneath the sink,
its contents only another invitation
to fill a slit in my wallet with VISA.
But what could I have meant?
I don’t recall what outrage
or why this critique of my compassion.
Maybe that day
I was thinking about footprints,
carbon footprints.
As often as I try to break them,
far too few of them are crumbling.
There is not enough currency, an unequal exchange
for ruined rain forests, ravaged rivers.
Those trees reduced to stumps
did call to us for surcease while
Marvelous pictures
rendered in heaven
filter down to us
revealing both star factories,
spawning baby stars 13.7 billion-years-old
And exposing what little abeyance we give
TO THE FACT THAT:
though screening our skins with
ample applications of impenetrable SPFs,
This diligence, is the only
eradication of our earthly exertions.
The planet’s skin is rift
with squamous cells and melanomas.
Despite my wishing
the beaming shaft of start fire
is growing desert lands
upon the fertile.
In Arizona backyards
they take refreshing dips
in sky-blue pools and lie
in the shade of non-indigenous deciduous trees.
In Southern California they dream up
gardens of potted palms
and Scentimental roses
and angle for aqua instead of vitae.
Sarah Figlio, ©2014.