a love poem to the Earth
You are the sea salt pine needles
Scenting the air
Recalling memories that are bone bound
You are the nub of what was a man’s left arm
His dirty finger nails on the right type a number on a woman’s iPhone
She was reading a book when the one armed man asked around to blank faces
“Can I use your phone?”
Her hand reaches out extending technology deemed more precious in minerals than the open heart required to give it
No signal underground on this here J train
He stays where he is
Stuck in between systems
Wearing an expired hospital wrist band
Is this the Earth?
What has become of our dissonance
You are the subtle shifting in seasons
Even under the weight of climate change
Your autumn never ceases to initiate excitement come August
I’ve written it before on your sandy shore
My hand in marriage belongs to now
A hand zips open a back pack and pulls out a green lollipop
Hands it unspoken to a mother holding a crying toddler
Smiles of acceptance and understanding
Novelty to a baby pauses what was unbearable before
Until it doesn’t work anymore
And I think of us adults
Grabbing for our synthetic substitutes
Mother moves to the corner seat as the toddler pulls for the soft skin that is the female mountain range
You are milk
I see you in kindness across stranger and familiar species exchanging iPhone, lollipop and oxytocin
Meanwhile, wildfires scorch Maui and I think of one of my Hawaiian students who stood outside with us faculty everyday picketing for a fair contract
What part of you is the burn, what part is us
How do you separate ash from the almost sinister consumption
In the last summer class, we listen to Ayisha Siddiqa’s words, “On Another Panel about climate, they ask me to sell the future and all I’ve got is a love poem”
A Pakistani-American young poet, climate activist and advisor to the UN
Her purple outfit on the cover of Time magazine projects behind me
I tell the seven students who decide to show up, write a love poem to the earth
Voices in Korean, Spanish and Lithuanian fill the room with apologies, gratitudes, and insight to the one place we all call home
A Palestinian’s Arabic to the right of me
A Canadian childhood in front speaks the poem I’m trying to muster
In this moment
The silence after words so authentically accurate
Populated by each corner of the planet
There is no other now
I’d rather be
On the way out of the cities cacophony, duffle in tow
I witness a blind man with his cane get caught between a woman’s legs facing the other direction
She rubs his shoulder as they both recover
About to intervene, as the cane comes close to an NYPD barricade
Another hand reaches out and pulls the man with squinty shapeshifting eyes in the direction of a clear path
What a relief to know it isn’t just I
who has to save the day
You
You
Are
Ubiquity