A Poem for Earth Day 2020

Dawn Breaks Over the Bones

There is a wild grief
in me and a sorrow that I
was part of something horrible
that I didn’t see, while I tinkered
hard with the given machinery.

I was focused, looking intently
the other way while it
happened, the decimation,
and the filth stacked up
behind my back, while
sugar plum fairies danced
inside my eyes—and
I sucked their exquisite little
toes in my long opium dream.

I worked so staggeringly, ridiculously
hard that I collapsed again craving
the next elaborated sweet thing, and
new dreams of ever sweeter things.

I wake in a world of filth and
disease knowing the dream
is over, along with that kind of work,
the soul-sucking slavery. I turn
the bones over and over, looking.

Now it is all sweat and dirt and green
and the fleshly neighbor I eschewed.
And I love my life, the bug,
the dirt, the green shoot, the
winged and four-footed friends;
and I would love you too.

© Anne Benvenuti 2020