Eden's Hero

     for s.a. griffin

Your feet sink deep into the gunk
coating Ma Earth, trapping you;
you, who would save the world for
another Walt Whitman, or a poppy
spreading its seed across untrampled
meadows, not K-Mart's new parking lot
or tomorrow's Trump Plaza.

Kent State was only a preview,
Charlie Manson, a mini holocaust.
Blood soon will be shed over gas masks
and bottles of clean water.
Our rivers will run red.

Rachel Carson moans in her grave,
but dump yards keep filling
with last year's TVs
rusty cars
Teflon pans
AAA batteries
Madonna's bras
AOL Disks
and Pampers
while
icebergs melt and
hurricanes roar through
coalescent seas.

A woman ducks into an alley;
struggles to reach her cardboard home
before night drowns the tired sun
and stars start their sad trek across
paths already vanishing beneath them.


Pris Campbell
©2006

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