Normally,
I prefer sunlight
To everything else
So familiar
And yet
Not the same:
Incandescent, GE, LED, Tungsten, Fluorescent.
Sunlight,
Giver of all life.
For some, a fancy submarine
And a Space X
or Y or Z
Rocket
Is fine.
I prefer the open meadow,
Lupine and poppy
After the rains,
Marshlands, boggy ..
Mountains and plains
Cathedrals of granite, of stone
Vast spaces to roam
Bounded only by skies
And
Filled by air
We breathe
Grounded by ground
Itself
Earth, dirt also
Giver of all life.
We have become takers, acquisitive, clever
Ambitious as those phallic rockets
Pointing out and away
Always ready to explode
By accident
Or design.
And
Deep sea submarines
Diving into depths, into death
Because
Maybe you are too bored?
There is so much to do
We are now too bored.
And yet we remain–
Each of us
Here
No one escapes–
We are
Mortal
Small
Infinitesimal
Tiny, baby squirrels with no fur
Blind.
Earth herself will
Swallow us whole
All of us!
All at once, if need be.
That is her capacity
Until the rain
Washes us clean,
And Sunlight
Earth, dirt, oxygen
Evokes
Us again
As green shoots, saplings
Bracken and fern—
In a whole new world,
A whole new world
Without us,
As we were:
Ungrateful children.
Of a Mother
Whose love
Was literally everything
on Earth.
—Ami Chen Mills