Lucille Lang Day – Instructions To My Poem
Can Poetry Save The Earth?
— John Felstiner
Go, little poem, remove excess carbon dioxide
and methane from the atmosphere,
deactivate the chlorofluorocarbons,
close the ozone hole, restore
the old growth redwood forests
on the coast of Northern California
and the mahogany trees and cathedral figs
cleared from rainforests to make
pastureland for cattle in Brazil, stop
clear-cutting in the Tillamook Forest
in Oregon and mountaintop removal
in Kentucky and West Virginia,
save the ice floes for the polar bears,
hatch the blotchy, olive-colored eggs
of the whooping crane in Canada, help
the sperm whale, gray bat and ocelot
find mates, remove all the mercury
from the oceans, get rid of every last scrap
of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,
destroy all the nuclear weapons in silos
in Russia, China and America, and don’t
forget the ones on submarines and planes.
Go, little poem. The problems breed
like flies and expand like bread rising.
If they totally stump you, just appear
on recycled paper in a very small magazine.
The world needs help, so do what you can.
Lucille Lang Day
Beltane 2011 Earth First!
Date: November 14, 2012
Categories: Lucille Lang Day
