16

We withdraw from

the still woods we love

the hollow call of ravens

where no fossil fuel

drives their dark wings

through dark cedars

How can this

bitumen dream bring life?

Every continent worked over

for the sour dead

of millennia pressed

into layers of coal and oil

You see we became gluttons

gulping down generations

of possibility as foul liquid—

under this land earth burns

the machinery of thought

grinds and shakes and strains

This is no compost

no death for future birth—

gas pouring out of our shopping

oil spilling from broken commodity—

we throw death after death

and draw dark flowers from our eyes