A Willow Tree

Someday I'd like to wander free like butterfly, like bumblebee, perhaps to plant a willow tree beside the silent solemn sea, before these things exist no more, from mountain top to shifting shore, when, soon, bald eagles cease to soar and build their aeries nevermore, and fish forsake polluted streams (where sulfur swims and typhoid teems since no one really cares it seems) to die inside our toxic dreams while ice caps melt and winter steams, and all the air surrounding reeks as children choke, for no one speaks of fracking wells or oily leaks (Big Brother's silenced all critiques!), and rancid rains acidify so woods no longer multiply (for God so wills, we can't deny, which is, of course, our alibi). And as the deepest ocean fills with plastic bags, and garbage spills upon the plains, across the hills and turns to poison dust that kills wild dingo dogs and daffodils which sink in swamps’ forsaken swills, the mocking bird makes light and trills (midst waning wails of whippoorwills) "Behold the surreal scene that chills and greet the dread that death distills! You've had your day with all the frills that brought the flood and final ills that can't be cured with bitter pills nor yet undone with further thrills of profit gained that grinds and fills dead desert sands with dollar bills." EPILOGUE Though swaddled still in infancy, we feel we’ve reached our primacy (aloof, though preaching piously, disdaining deeds of decency) and have no need of augury. But in the pit of prophecy the crucial questions seem to be: “Is doom Earth’s fate, our destiny to twist in tides of agony destroying nature’s progeny with no return a certainty assured by death’s finality?” and ”Should we plant a willow tree to someday weep for you and me?”