Who’d Blame You
Poem
Who’d blame the waves for leaving the oceans
Now leaching oil through their shores
The garbage washed upon the grains of millions of years
This man-made travesty upon nature’s course
As if we somehow cleaned it up
Picked up the pieces
Suddenly it all would be pure
Who’d fault the birds for spreading their wings
And lifting into the breeze
Their songs lilting back
As if they’d never had the option to stay put for
More than just one second
Who’d fault the ice for melting in
The atmospheric heat
As though a grudge held for millions of years
Only to avenge your undoing by changing the water levels
Turning the climate
Reminding Earth that it’d be sorry
Who’d blame you for leaving when it’s all a mess
As if fault lines had not crossed these paths before
As the tectonics shift again below the surface we
Are always reminded that we were never safe
It was our choice
To build our homes here
more by KRISTEN GREEN
photograph by Jeremy Ricketts
