Listen! you may believe it
merely story:
but once we glistened
like a bird’s golden plumage
our bodies all we had
to offer up
our humanity
everlasting truth
be told
the great unraveling
unraveled
one dull morning
clocked in
perpetually beaten
self-medicated
incapacitated
picture some dung beetle
in the muck of it
volition violation
volatile velocity
we rolled out of bed
into the numbing
unacknowledged
unaccounted
paralyzed
spine of less than

Listen! that thing
you drove over
that collision
of histories
leaves us all crawling
in this ethereal city
where once
came to a reverberating halt
under the steady gaze
of sexy prophets
shiny gods
fast cars
fast food
clear cut
clear conscience
half-life
half-lie . . .
while the patriotic and ordinary citoyen
rush about
doing ordinary things
like washing face and hands
or letting them go dirty
get filthy

Listen! you may prefer
to be strung along
like a fish
underwater
but here is water
at your feet
and rising
you see that thing
was me, damn it
and is me
stoked
and stroked
by transitory
belonging:
high resolution
flat words
like happiness
and reconciliation

But there is no two ways
no fear
it is too late for that
the earth will heal
eventually
magnificently
when our species
is gone the way of
the last Redwood
that looks with cedar eyes
across the belly of America
to this naked World
witness
to the inevitable
reckoning

Photograph © Simeon Berg