species

March 11, 2023

ACCESSIBILITY

Technology has afforded those of us
with impairments the ability
to more fully participate
in the world around us.

However we can never lose sight,
a painful use of the phrase
in my case, of its imperfections.

Perhaps it is merely anticipating
the future of our species, as when
the phones captioning decided
a somewhat elided Marsha and Barry
was in fact Martian berries.
As crazy as that seems at first,
looking around at how we
have laid waste to this planet
exobiology and exobotany
may be the last and only
hope for our species, but
I do wonder how they will taste.

December 11, 2022

A SIMPLE TASK

You misunderstand me, he said,
I did not ask you to write a poem
about a flower, anyone can do that,
I asked you to write a poem with a flower.

Do not ask me what the poem
will be about, ask the flower, but
first you must learn to speak
the language of the flowers.

If you find this difficult, consult
the sky, it is fluent in almost all
species of plant life, mother to
them at one time or another.

When you have finished, cast it
to the morning breeze, that
it might find purchase somewhere
and sing its song to a new audience.

November 19, 2022

EXTINCT

You want us to believe
you are small, kind creatures
sucking hungrily on the teat
of democracy.

We see you for who
you really are, parasites
who would suck the teat
dry until democracy
withered and died.

Some believe you,
accept you blindly
but what will they do
if you succeed, for like
any invasive species
when the host is gone
there is only mourning.

February 8, 2022

THE LADDER

We have anointed ourselves
the highest of species, able
to assert our dominion over all
which might be fortunate enough
to fall within our protection.

Some say we have eliminated
species, but they fail to recognize
that it was simply survival
of the fittest, that Darwinian
rules must govern nature’s game.

We mourn those gone, but never
pause to consider that based
on the game’s rules, we will always
finish second on the scale for it is
the cockroach who will preserve
our legacy when we have all too soon
killed ourselves off with our arrogance

February 6, 2022

ALLIGATOR TEARS

Despite my admittedly limted efforts
I still fail to understand why
people here have fallen so in love
with plastic shoes, and more so,
why they are called Crocs
and feature a crocodile on the package.

I know one species of croc
does inhabit this country, but almost
exclusively in South Florida,
where alligators are far more prevalent.

And in any event, if anyone
in Niwot, Colorado happens upon
a crocodile wandering about
they should definitely capture it
because Boulder County could use
another tourist attraction.

July 21, 2021

LADDER

You have to stop and wonder,
the child said, why people
can take joy in killing, why
people can scheme each other,
why people can cheat if they can.

Birds, the child added, only
try and scheme people for food,
why they cheat for the sake
of cheating, kill for pleasure,
yet we say we are the higher species.

Perhaps, the child concludes,
it is we who are standing
on our heads, looking up
the species ladder, and we
are actually on the bottom.

April 4, 2021

GRAMMATICALLY APART

What sets us apart
from other species
has little or nothing
to do with self-awareness
and everything to do
with parts of speech.

The birds outside
my window shun labels,
think only of eating,
mating, flight, of going
and arriving, of being.

They know nothing of birth,
do not fear death, for it
is merely a label they cannot
accept or understand.

It is left to our kind
to need to label, to define
every small and large thing
for we sense our existence
and must rely on two things,
for we knew that we live
a world of pronoun and noun.

February 10, 2021

EXTINCTION

My granddaughter is intensely
concerned with the growing loss
of species, and rightly so, and I
share her fears, though I feel
largely powerless to do anything.

She has the faith of youth, a belief
that she and her peers can,
with work, effect a lasting change,
climb up the slippery slope which
we have cast them down, and save
other species from a fate
nature never could have intended.

But she cannot fathom the losses
that I have seen, things I knew
rendered extinct by her generation,
and that of her parents, the cassette
player, the typewriter, carbon paper,
and stationery and a writing desk,
to name only a few, but at least
the haven’t outdated my Blackberry.

October 21, 2020

FORKED TONGUE

I can’t tell you how long
it’s been since I’ve seen
a snake around here, mostly
because my sense of time
has limits of a decade.

I read that they are plentiful
in the Everglades, hunted
as an invasive species, which
probably stands to reason
since our hatred is by now

of Biblical proportions, and we
have learned to love goats,
so, it is the snake that now
is consigned to be the source
of all our errors and failings.

And were that not enough,
you cannot trust what a snake
says for obvious reasons, but you
must ignore that the hummingbird
beloved by all, also has a forked tongue.

July 12, 2020

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

We are, he is convinced,
devolving into verbal neanderthals,
losing are ability to recognize
the linguistic tools that once
set us apart from other species,
or at least so we assured ourselves.
She knows that what truly sets us
apart from other species is the arcane
skill we have at being able
to convince ourselves that
delusion, firmly held, is fact.
Still, she cannot disagree with him,
simplicity is a too close cousin
to inanity, and nuance is the first
relative to be cast out. And so
with ever fewer words, we seem
to have ever more to say,
and speaking endlessly, say ever less.