I will never see your secret spaces
listen to the bold songs of birds
or the screeches of primate tribes
in trees along slow muddy waters.
Nor will I spy the silhouette
of the silent jaguar’s shadow

Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos

How can two words capture the magic of such a creature?
How can a name hold the essence of anything? I wonder, cradling
huckleberries from the bush, how to express the way my hands
are left a misty purple,

Let’s go to the beach today
It’s closed, I know, the Great Highway, the great expanse
But I know a way in-
I’m a scientist.
I’ll show them my credentials, say you’re my assistant

We’re here to study the shoreline, what’s left of it

They’ve painted your tank blue so you forget
how your paws flung moonstone stars across the
Northern Lights, how your cubs, seal-small, clung to
falling spires of snow and scarred, songless ice,

I served 20 years 4 months 3 days
for a theft I didn’t commit.
Solitary. Abuse. Neglect.
Suffering. Shame.
Victim of mistaken identity.
Suggestive questioning. Self-interest.
Gross negligence. Prosecutorial misconduct.

Mascara swirling down her face,
the woman with sagging eyelids

stands on the chipped concrete
like the tall factory pipe
connected to the power plant machines.
She doesn’t think about her plight,
only the fact that she must make the ends meet
in order to feed her 2 children.

Our kids march in the streets for Climate Change.
They’re chanting we are running out of time
disturbed by watching all the rising seas
from hurricanes, huge fires, torrential rains.
Their fears and tears give me a bit of hope
that our vast world will flourish when I’m gone.