The clouds roll in on rails
Freighted with storms headed West,
A great chain of color clanking
Across the sky, a mass of iron
Ripped from the Earth,
A train that refuses to stop,
That swallows coal
And pays off the canary
With profits plundered
From the sea.

I can hear the distant prisons being built
To house homeless children in the womb,
Can see money changing hands
And no one held to account,
Can feel the wind rise in anger
And my hot blood cool to metal.

Toward the East there are the mines:
Bodies enslaved, stooped, darkened, sweaty,
The poor man paid to be poor and sick,
The dark green forests ripped apart,
Their entrails, their dark green blood spilled
Like cadavers on a field of battle so fierce,
No one dares to mourn the dead.

But in the West the sun is rising, rising,
Each blade of light a sword cleaving
The heavy polluted air, the polluter’s throat,
The glutton’s greedy eye…
Each morning bird’s warble declares:
Beauty builds nests
That hope may take feathered flight
To soar high above the clouds, circling, circling,
Until the righteous Eagle scares its prey
With talons sharp, by resistance sharpened,
And we, the righteous, dawn a brand-new day.

July 20, 2017