This poem is holding all of us hostage.
Over 400 parts per million of it
Are infused into the air you are breathing.
The only way to rid ourselves of this poem
Is to do what it demands.
So we might as well take a deep draft of it
And go with its flow.
This poem roars out of the tailpipe
Of your gasoline-powered automobile.
It billows out of the stacks
Looming above the gas-fired power plant
That generates the electricity
Illuminating my computer screen.
This poem farts out of the cows
Languishing in the feedlot
From which they are sent to be rendered
Into your dinner.
This poem is being composed
By unclean coal
Burning ore into steel
That holds up my kitchen table.
This poem will melt Alaska
Till Texas freezes over,
And blast derechos across Iowa
Till palm trees grow in Oregon.
It will flood Nebraska
Till San Diego’s golf courses turn brown.
This poem isn’t going to go away by itself.
Upon reading, it insinuates into the brain
A prion of carbon driving us to madness
Or change.
But if we go where it leads,
This poem will install solar panels,
Windmills, wave-power generators.
This poem will demand payment for carbon emissions
Until they are ended.
It will divest from the fossil fuel industry.
It will press for a plant-based diet.
It will restore the health of the soil;
It will plant billions of trees.
This poem will put capitalism in its place,
Subsidiary to protection of the ecosystem
And provision for the common good.
This poem is insidious.
This poem is not debatable.
This poem out-foxes Fox.
It fries the liars
And drowns out its deniers.
We are all stuck with this poem
Until we finish it:
Not with more words,
But with decisive actions.