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If Only Cleverness Could Sustain Her

By 04/14/2010September 9th, 2014All Posts

a poem

If Only Cleverness Could Sustain Her

The Earth is unconvinced by our arguments
That She’s doing just fine,

The ice caps remain skeptical
Of our witty reasons and rhymes,

The rising oceans do not wait
As we take our sweet time.

This world is in the cross-fire
Of our denial, and it’s the fearless storms
Who’ll speak most clearly at the trial.

Mother Earth has a crazy fever
And we just let her moan,
Like a long-forgotten parent
In a nursing home alone.

Ryan Hollon

2 Comments

  • libramoon says:

    Agrarian Age

    In Spring we speak of seeds
    bundled possibilities
    foreseeing market days hale and fair
    succulent fruit, trilling herbs,
    vitalizing veggies
    and all the spicey chatter of conviviality

    First there was the seed
    plowed under to taste Earth,
    swell with water,
    burst into fecund brew building
    cells of chlorophyll to catch the fire,
    symbiotically breathe, exchanging
    death for life

    Sacred seed
    clothed in mystic ceremonies
    deeply deified in chthonic memory
    We carry the seed of our fathers,
    the tears of our mothers,
    the hopes and fears of our priests and lords,
    over rocky terrain, in hidden caves through
    ice and flood and slavering predation,
    never doubting nobility of destiny
    On appointed days, carefully watching solar/lunar
    alignments,
    our assigned labor commences. Busy as any
    bird or bee, we commit seed to chosen ground
    with all the love we can command
    Then, off to bacchanalia, reveling in a grand scheme
    promising sustenance, renewed strength, plans,
    romances, unnumbered chances for pride
    and glory

    Thus goes the story we retell in lullaby,
    in schoolyard intimacies and scholarly lies,
    puffing up our little share of knowledge, magical
    protection from overwhelming vastness
    of mystery, shades of colors without name

    Unclear on the protocol of shame, unwilling to admit
    to ignorance that might unsettle carefully laid
    hierarchies, unloose gates inviting chaos or worse,
    we gather of our fruit for sacrifice to gods of greed and vice,
    gleefully watch the rending of they who are not me

    “I, too wise for such ill use, repeatedly proven
    in my abuse of these ill-named foes I refuse to admit
    as kin — sinners, Lord. Surely I’ll not be taken in,
    not take them in. Not share the bounty of your seed,
    given to the chosen.”

    Even in these days of polluted soil, of toil
    demoted to laughable commodity,
    idly watching waste stream into muddy rivers,
    enjoying occasional feasts of vicarious blood,
    throwing the unsanctified into the raging flood,
    desperately trying to stem an unquenchable tide,
    while hiding any glimpse of remorse lest shadow
    presage disaster
    Eating both fruit and seed, rather than part with
    familiar fantasy

    April 2010

  • Gilda Haas says:

    Lovely poem, libramoon. Thank you so much for sharing it. What did you think of Ryan’s?

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