JoAnn Early Macken

 

skull-and-crossbones signs
would give a clearer warning
of the danger here

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Visit, read, enjoy! 

Read on--more National Poetry Month poems below!

You know how you get up in the morning and check the weather forecast, and you see that rain is on its way again, so you figure you'd better get your walk in early, and maybe today is finally the day to scatter the last of the milkweed seeds that spent the winter in the garage after you stored all you thought you could possibly use in the refrigerator to plant when the weather warms up? So you head to the bike path and spread those seeds around the bare spots along one side, and it's already foggy and kind of damp, so they stick to the dirt instead of flying away, and you keep walking through the wet grass, even after your feet are soaked, scattering milkweed seeds and hoping they'll sprout and monarchs will come, along with all the other creatures that benefit from milkweed, until you reach the garlic mustard patch that goes on and on and on, and it gets harder and harder to find any bare spots?

But eventually you do, and all the seeds are spread, and by then you have to pee, so you walk into the clubhouse of the golf course in the public park that your tax dollars pay for, and you see that someone has knocked down two swallows' nests in the entranceway because heaven forbid some bird poops outside the clubhouse, and when you come back out, you notice that there is not one dandelion on the whole golf course, which you know means that the park has been poisoned with pesticides, and you wonder what will happen to the worms that those robins over there are hunting for, and wait a minute—are there any worms? And you wish the robins good luck and safe hunting, and you turn around to head home thinking, How on Earth are we going to fix this?

And then you realize that you just said "we." Because all over the world, millions of people like you are trying to do the right thing, trying to care for our planet in spite of what the greedy idiots in power say, doing whatever little bits and pieces they can to try to protect what they care about. Millions of people are planting milkweed and pulling out invasive weeds and picking up trash. Millions of people are remembering to bring (and even make) their own shopping bags and refusing plastic and recycling what can be recycled, and no, it's not enough, not yet, but you can't give up because it's still the right thing to do and at least—thank goodness—you are not alone.