We’re walking to school together,
and it’s clear, even on the
short half-mile walk, that people
don’t really care about the earth.
Soda bottles hug curbs.
Candy wrappers flap like flags,
caught between two blades of grass.
An old fast food bag,
with the trash that tells of
almost everything consumed
except for a few fries, crunches
beneath the tires of careless cars.
No one stops to pick any of it up,
put it where it belongs.
Not even me.
My boys stop to hassle a snail,
on its way to who knows here.
They stop to examine a busy ant pile,
waves crawling across the indentation
of a shoe that, from its simple print,
leaves no indication as to whether
this disturbance was accidental or purposeful.
They pause to pick flowers in the field
beside their school, and I am struck, momentarily,
by how beautiful this earth is,
by how solid it appears but
how very fragile it actually is.
I wonder if my children’s children
will be able to stop and trace
the shiny path of a snail.
I wonder if my children’s children
will bend to observe an anthill come alive.
I wonder if they will have the pleasure
of dancing in a field of flowers,
picking handfuls of purple and white
to thrust at their mother.
I hope they do.
I want to make sure they do.
But then we are back home,
where the madness of life
tornadoes around me,
and I forget about the
fragility of the earth,
in favor of my own fragility.
And I know, then, why people forget
to care about the earth.
Life is
much more urgent.
This is an excerpt from Textbook of an Ordinary Life: poems. For more of Rachel’s poems, visit her Reader Library page, where you can get a few volumes for free.
(Photo by Chang Qing on Unsplash)
