I was green once.
In my youth or was it in my mind
I mourned the burning hectares in Brazil.
It was the flavor of the times, the Rio summit and
Greenpeace, and the apocalypse of the last drop of oil
Would come in 50 years.
35 years left.
I bought my first car.
In the confusion of my quarterlife
I moaned about living in the tropics.
It was the flavor of the times, the perpetual limbo at Kyoto
Hanging enshrouded behind the perpetual limbo at Baghdad
And Pyongyang and the apocalypse of nuclear terror
Would come if we bothered to think about it.
How many years left?
I ask that question all the time,
Perhaps as a litany of desperation
While I float unsteadily in the oily sea,
Buoyed by feather-light indecision
Perpetually escaping to silicon islands,
But I ask that question all the time.
Once in awhile I catch the gaze
Of other sailors navigating these oily times
And in their eyes I find the same seasickness
And they, too, ask that question,
If only to star-filled night skies
If only in their deepest dreams.
But sailors long out at sea,
Have grown insensitive to the poison
Of too much sun and too much salty wind.
We know not the delirium in which we wallow,
We know not the fever on our brows,
And if once we asked earnest questions
We learn not to ask too many of them.
20 years left.
I would have upgraded my property.
In the fever of hysterical weather
I would worry about the wax and wane of the market,
And pretend to listen when my daughter harps
About legendary ice caps and sinking islands.
It would be the flavour of the times to look to the sun and to the
atom,
To think that maybe the apocalypse of Her fever might yet be
averted
By our own febrile faith in omnipotent, omnipresent market
forces.
How many years left?
*July 2007*
