Happy Earth Day

The snows of April having passed,
we test the alien weather now,
knuckle frigid window glass
to guess what nature might allow.

Leery of the cytotoxic light
that both illuminates and blinds,
the rain that nourishes but might
dissolve enamel traffic signs,

we drive two hundred horses down
the street to get the morning news;
as arctic creatures starve and drown,
we send tomorrow up our flues.

Convenience cripples. Comfort kills.
Freedoms harden into chains.
We sell our lives to pay the bills,
content ourselves with what remains,

which is to say the enervation
gripping us by close of day,
the time when sundry corporations
vie to be the ones we pay,

with ghostly semblances that skid
across our screens, hissing lies
precisely pitched for falling lids:
our psyches open as we close our eyes.

Which may be why we have the thought,
with April suffering a freeze,
to get the car we should have bought,
with all the right amenities,

and why we fly in salads worth
the lives of happy, foreign elves,
and why, if we’re to save the earth,
we must awake, and kill ourselves.