poem: Making the World Safe for Thistles

Making the World Safe for Thistles

Teredos and gribbles demolish our docks,
Our pilings and coastal tideways.
Clearcuts make forest turn to rocks;
Mt. Saint Helens just slaps trees sideways.
As our tombstones are etched and landmarks spall,
As our lakes grow too acid for vultures,
Our heroic flora and fauna fall
And with them their tight-knit cultures.
Bolting up from the drouth, instead,
Rise determined species of thistle −
The "star," the "blessed," the "nodding head,"
With taproot and backpack missile.

Blind am I as the hurricane swash
That reduces motels to rubble.
With my brain as sharp as fresh gouache
I rub at my eyes and stubble,
And fancy I'll clear just one floppy disk
While struggling to greet the morning.
I'll push <delete> ... I ignore the risk ...
I click at the beeping warning.
Now whirring and scrubbing nudge at my head.
I inhale a nervous whistle.
All is gone, so quick, so frail, so dead!
If erasing don't scare me, this'll.

Paleface that settled in Terre Haute
Came on barks or the Yankee clipper.
The Atlantic they viewed as a mighty moat,
And Europe a cast off slipper.
Disease and the army removed strong nations
From vast deposits of loess,
Now fences and farms prevent migration,
Emprison the wilderness.
Gone are great bison and leached, good land,
And the farmers have hardened to gristle.
How a Dust Bowl could form they don't understand ...
If experience don't teach 'em, thistle.

King Ferdinand used overreaching means
To rout the last Moors from Granada.
Torquemada helped Spain expel the Jews,
Like Silva helped Rome at Masada.
Auschwitz now heads up that murderous line;
For Darfur our hearts grow spongy.
Do we notice how western Canadian pine
All drop dead from beetle-borne fungi?
Our air is a hideous nitrous brown
And its oxygen content suffers,
Wells become tainted and fishes drown,
Deprived of all natural buffers.

The dead and gone don't unerase.
Life can't be cloned from bristle.
All that can thrive in such blighted space
Are the likes of invasive thistle.

-- Leslie G. Harper
   July 17, 2005