It’s all alive and breathing.
Spruce tree trying to shake the vine from itself in the wind
The vine clinging, wrestling, strangling its host
In a graceful dance of combat, duel,
In a slow race to the sun.
Craggy rock with infrequent sighs, cracking
Once every thousand years or so,
When ever invasive water breaks its skin,
With expansive, frozen tears.

All of us stretching ourselves to live
Counting off our dividends as validation
To our existence, blithely driving smog
Beasts consuming with burp and cough
Their liquid diet of never-ending death
All the while knowing rust is imminent.

The fish watch with their school of eyes
As I follow, yellow mask an amplification of my own.
Yet they don’t attack, they don’t scold
For invading their watery territory,
They don’t mark off their boundary with a fence
And call it home.

The geese recognize the purr of the car that is mine,
Run into the light to greet me,
Ask for help getting back into the pen
Where they are safer from the night invaders
Who choose their lives to survive, no apologies.  
When I drive a different vehicle, they don’t arrive,
They hide until they hear my voice sing their names.
People call them dumb animals.
Trust is not instinctive, knowing who to trust-
That’s intelligence, not chance survival.

We know the ice caps are melting,
We’ve been told what this will lead to,
We’ve seen the movies made with enough money to feed
All of the marginalized, cure all of the failing,
Viewed newscasts which usurped as many more,
The polar bear only knows exhaustion, constant hunger
Expects nothing from anyone, seeks life to sustain,
Then dies with an empty belly; alone.
Camera person didn’t throw him a fish.  
A gentle man sits at his kitchen table
His hands shuffle a deck of cards,
Wrinkled Hands that once held a grenade,
Fingers once pulled a trigger
More times than his brain will allow;
Blood was once his justification for life.
Since the War he has lived as a pauper,
Newspapers for shoes, he leaves
Millions to local schoolchildren;
A Legacy of Never Enough.

Maybe, just maybe
She sighs
This next pair of shoes
Will fill that empty hole
In my heart, will make tomorrow better
As long as I don’t know of the children,
Fingers lost to a hole-punch,
Garbage eaten for breakfast,
Parasites with glass of water, just
A new sole for my soul.

Iridescence, light, soul
All fleeting, things we think we own
Yet anyone who has seen the eyes
Of a dog who has suffered
Can tell you
We are not alone.
I pray for peace, but desire to
Tear the boy who tied the log
To her poor neck,
Set her loose in a field unfed,
Apart - with my own hands.  

If I could, if my soul were powerful enough
If a soul is there at all
I would rip it from my chest violently
Cursing every drop of blood that fell,
Screaming angry epithets at you all
And throw it like a blanket
Upon the woe of the world
If I thought it could stop us from ourselves.
My soul is called Regret
My heart is called Enemy.