Tag Archives: Ecology

Ocean Koan

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I woke up early this morning and while I was waiting for the prompt, a dolphin swam into my consciousness and prompted this tale.  While you are waiting for me to write a poem about the sense of smell, (today’s prompt), please be content with this one written about another sense:

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Ocean Koan

Ocean Koan

The dolphins ride in on the music,
but why did they come here?
Did they seek to lend their harmonies
to a music new and queer?
Did they soar in on its melody,
come  in on a riff,
drawn by its dissonant whistle—
a mere beckoning whiff?

Whatever the dolphins are hearing,
whatever they’re trying to reach,
we don’t understand their language
as they lie stranded on our beach.
Perhaps we divert them with towers
that speak in a tongue their own,
and though it’s not our intention,
our messages form a koan

that they are driven to answer
as we’re drawn to outer space,
pulled to find our others
in an alien clime and place.
We believe we are harmless and loving,
at peace with their watered dreams;
when in truth we are drying their world up—
ripping it at the seams.

We send out the signals to pull them
to where they should not be,
like fairytales told to children
that draw them to our knee—
We turn our backs to the seaward window,
seal our ears to their keening tones
as the dolphins swimming landward
pave our beaches with their bones.

 

I am not an expert on sonar or other communication technology.  If you want to hear more on the subject, go here:  http://www.earthportals.com/beachedwhales.html

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/smell-you-later/

Addicted

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Addicted

It’s altering our planet, or so the experts say,
but I fear I am addicted, for I take it every day.
As regular as clockwork–morning, noon and night–
whenever I have need of it, I take it as my right.

I can take it when I’ve planned to or also just ad hoc
when I need to go out shopping, to the dentist or the doc.
I can take it while I’m listening or take it while I’m talking,
but the one time I can’t take it is whenever I am walking.

It’s become a real compulsion, an addiction and a crutch.
I’d try to give it up but I enjoy it way too much.
Yet I do not need to search it out in pharmacy or bar,
for the thing I cannot do without is just my little car.

The Prompt: Think Global, Act Local–Link a global issue to your personal life.

See more writing on this theme at: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/think-global-act-local/

It’s a Gas

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                        It’s a Gas

I know that I saw it on You Tube
(and I’m sure that it wasn’t a dream)
—a machine that shreds old soda bottles
and melts them to make gasoline.

The machine they were using to make it
was compact—and could possibly be
installed in each house or wherever
you think you might like it to be.

Grocery stores, motels or roadside—
(wherever these bottles collect)
instead of machines set for vending,
would have a machine to inject

with all of the plastic you brought there
and for it you’d get, I deduce,
credit for all of the petrol
the bottles you brought in produce.

Every gas station would honor
these chits that you’d get every day.
You’d make a big saving on gas bills
with bottles you once threw away.

You could save up your old plastic bottles
and toss them right into your trunk
right next to the tools and blankets and flares
and all of the usual junk.

And when you next went for refreshments,
for soda or candy or chips,
you could also deposit your bottles,
’cause your car also needs a few sips.

Daily Prompt: Vending Wishes—Soft drinks, electronics, nutrient-free snacks — you can get all of those from a vending machine. But what type of vending machine is sorely needed but doesn’t yet exist? Share your automated retail fantasies with us!

The process I describe here is not fictional. Google “pyrolysis” if you want more information.

Saving Daylight

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I live in Mexico. We just changed over to DST today—a few weeks after the U.S. did. As though DST isn’t complicated enough, countries get to arbitrarily decide when to switch to it. Obviously, this poem was written during the fall switchover, not the spring.  I’ve never been able to remember which is switching on, which switching off.  At any rate, this is not my daily NaPoWriMo poem as it wasn’t written today.

Saving Daylight

After altering the course of rivers,
moving or removing coastlines,
forests, ozone-protection,
minerals and fossil fuel,
we look for what next to change
and notice time.

(Perhaps time, a manmade concept anyway,
can be less-devastatingly tampered with?)

There are those who know
better than God or nature
when light is needed
and they have set the world right.

We are saving daylight
all over the world,
taking it from the morning’s wallet
and transferring it
to a back pocket.

Led like blind lambs,
we change our clocks,
lost in dark mornings
so games of golf or tennis
can be played well past
the natural end of day.

Gardeners and house builders
climb the hills to work
lighting their ways with flashlights,
in search of that lost morning hour of light.

Like sheep made clumsy, stumbling over stiles,
schoolchildren’s toes
feel for cobblestones in the dark
between street lamps
spaced a block apart.

as, like investors too anxious
to save up for a rainy day,
a world in the dark
makes forced deposits every morning,
withdraws them, interest free, each evening.
Her animals and birds and tribes
lost to schemes
carefully planned.