Tuesday, July 13, 2021

PYROCENE THIS TIME

by Corey Weinstein

 


Nowhere winds bluster cloudless skies
blistering skins of rattle-windowed homes,
The parched air bites through wilted gardens,
Dry lightning judges the boiling world,
Heaven’s fiery tongues crackle the air
that booms the world without drenching grace,
Bestowing 8,000 square mile conflagrations,
Gaia’s retribution for dragging incendiaries
up from her breast with mine and pump,
Ripping off mountain tops, greasing her fissures,
Terra not Firma shakes our foundations.
 
Who is this people, these fire starters
that bespoil their nest and neighbor’s land?
In bands they were heroes of ice time survival
in pleasant harmony with their birthing world,
Now their fires are hidden in machines,
Personal aluminum hundred horse teams.
              Firepower unbound
                              Industrial pyro-pathologies
 Burning day and night
                      Blind to deluge and drought
                 Billions          Coal
     Tons             Gallons               Gas
           Billions     Daily     Billions!    
                Unimaginable bounty
                  Essential inferno.
 
A world melting into a grandchild’s future.


Corey Weinstein is a retired physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He is an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band.