Seed Storm

*

Upheaval

The woman who came into our new
shop and announced that mini carrots
are not real --

a flat expanse of West Texas
outside Brownfield, cotton farms as far
as the eye can see morph to an empire of dairy
farms, mud lots, cows standing
in their own excrement, then
a gigantic chartreuse monster mansion,
with a white picket fence --

"That's not real," Jay announces.

Ronnie Walker says that Bird Flu
is real --

70% of the song birds on
the planet have been wiped out
in the last 100 years, that's real.

Global Warming is real.

Ronnie says to buy rice, beans, corn meal,
face masks.

We've moved and are up to our eyeballs
in boxes.

Where will I put a three month supply
of cat litter, dog food, water?

Vertical trading in the mountains in Equador --
Alpaca from the heights, and wool, below
vegetables, rice, coffee half way up,
abundance that was shared
before the Conquistadors --

Street people in Brazil relocated to farm
coops on land taken back from multi-national
plantations --

The worst government imaginable --
and a living map of how the Germans
allowed Hitler, here --
"But my friends, family, we are good people."

Mothers, fathers, bleeding --
slaughtered babies in their arms.

Our government did this.
We can't even get a paper trail for voting
machines.

There is a moment
when the tower falls.

Josh, at supper, talking about bird flu,
saying, "It is real. Everything will
break."

CNN runs loops of a federal
search for a lost whippet the day
the FBI invades Puerto Rico!

Dick Cheney, a blood thirsty, callous,
evil son-of-a-bitch-liar. Who knew?

I buy sacks of rice and beans.

Josh at supper, twenty-five-years-old,
hopelessly in love saying,"
Maybe the earth is fighting back."

"Six out of ten people who get bird flu die,"
John says.

"If I am one of the ones who has to die," Josh
says, "It's ok."

"Why?"

"Because everything has to break."

We did a great job, did we not, making
the world better for our children?

There have been upheavals, plagues, disasters,
throughout history.

The "haves" insulate themselves,
arrive first at mounds of blood and rubble,
get everything that's useable, start over.

So here's an idea.

Send bird feeders to the G-8 leaders.
Gift the WTO with chicken feed. Send it to Monsanto.
Scatter bird seed around every major corporate
head quarters, tons and loads of bird seed.

Scatter bird seed
on lawns in corporate neighborhoods,
around the public and private digs of empire --

Millions of people, seeding the rich.

(Smile)

©Susan Bright

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh

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"Seed Storm" courtesy of Sheila Simpson-Creps