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.