Red Desert

When I was a child, I would find

frogs in the shallow pools off the end

of Durkee Lane. My brothers

and sisters and I would race the frogs,

watch them hop off into the woods. Today,

walking by the shore edge, through the marshes

and the woods, I notice there are few frogs

and the few there are have stubby, malformed legs.

Telephone lines cross the lands like giant spider webs.

Dark light and desolation.

Where are the bees?

I read in the newspaper that there is

no ice in the arctic this year, bad

for polar bears, otters and seals who cannot

find sufficient food to survive.

A husband, too busy, dismisses a wife

with a gesture of his hands.

The wind carries the emissions from the coal factories

in China across the ocean where they drop

on the ground in the woods of California.

The leftover chemical wastes are dumped

into the water.

From the ferry I see the mound in Brookhaven, the

one that looks from a distance like a glistening

white mountain from a fairy tale

but is landfill wastes.

She writes to another man "One can be married

and yet be so alone."

Hundreds of children in Japan die or are sickened

from the high concentration of mercury

in the fish they eat.

A touch, small words and the world is all heat

and red poppies.

The mind's paints are startling. Antonioni red.

Yellow emissions pour

from the plant's chimney filling the sky

with infernal sulfurous sludge.

And yet still a bird sings.

Published in Gradiva     Volume 37/38     2010

Stony Brook University/The University of Rome, Italy

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