by George Salamon
"Humans have become as great an influence on the planet as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," Anthony Barnosky, Stanford University biologist, quoted in The New York Times, July 30, 2021
Paradise was lost long ago,
now it's the turn of Earth,
where humans have assumed
privileges and rights for themselves:
this island belongs to us, one
nation claims, another the right
to inhabit space.
We're mammals, denying the
prehistory of our origins, the
story of how our ancestors
turned the earth's jungles into
today's fortress of machine
and stone.
We've moved too quickly past
the awe for earth's order, left
behind in the wild, playful
nature of the child, now that
we are beginning to feel the
coming storm.
George Salamon lives and waits, hoping for the best, in St. Louis, MO.