*1944-2012

Putting it all together

In my birthplace,

The Elm City,

there are no elms.

Even Ithaca
cut hundreds 
when I was there  

at twenty.

Dartmouth

on my daily drive

four decades later

has somehow saved

a dwindled dozen.

Now, 2012,

Thanksgiving Day night,

the news reports

an immigrant bug,

from Asia of course,

feasting in funereal crunch

on “our” Orange trees.

The night before,

The Dust Bowl
documents:
 “Half the Ogallala

aquifer has been 
used up.”

It will be gone

in 40 years.

We irrigate

and a billion

mouths

masticate.

Moderns know too much.

Snakes, once pets, 
now 20 feet long,

some 200 pounds,

slither and copulate

unchecked in

southern grasses.

(Some say snakes  have 
even seized Guam 
in a war undeclared.)

The Red Pine is

repast for another

hungry invader.

The Jersey shore

and Manhattan

go under water

for a day as Sandy

has her windy way.

Swinging from

monkey to man,

winging worldwide,

first class and tourist,

a lethal vacationer,
HIV is now hosted 
by 31 million, 
many unknowing.

All the while

kudzu

grows sixty feet

a summer season,

snakelike on its

smothering sunlight 
mission.

And 
our children

numb themselves . . . .

from 
all
knowing.