TO THE SEABIRDS IN THE GULF

by Joel Solonche


How clever your ancestors
must have thought they were,

looking around at the earth
getting more and more crowded,

then up at the empty sky,
putting two and two together,

never in their wildest dreams
foreseeing how the descendants

of those stupid creatures
swinging in the trees, eating leaves,

sleeping the day away would,
with the black oil of arrogance,

anoint themselves gods
and destroy you here.


J.R. Solonche is co-author (with wife Joan Siegel) of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). His poems have appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies since the 1970s. He teaches at SUNY Orange in Middletown, New York.
___________________________________________