The Sound a Plant Makes

21 February 2023

Will any number of plants relieve the pressure?
No, the iron rages on toward tomorrow, restless,
without reservation. Do any remain who hear the moan
beneath the steady drone of sure-footed, still uncertain
electricity? The moan of earthly things, those things,
alas, that are not standardized, because the earth,
alas, is not a factory. Try as we might, it still
is what it is, and, troublingly, is what we are.
No number of plants will relieve the burden
of care, nor the pain of our carelessness. There is a
tight symbiosis of everything, always,
and some humans know that. But this is no
amicable reverie, longing for forgone perfection,
which never existed. This is but the next step forward.
We've learned well that nature can harm us,
that not all its processes will be beneficent.
Now we must learn how to pick and to choose
and to nurture those things that sustain us.

I have inscribed some future epitaph,
forged in times of strife unlike our own.
It is a tale of war inscribed on bones
ne'er brittle, by command. These bones speak now,
or so the story goes, and yet I weep
for those who militarized the world,
who could not demilitarize their souls.