Global Warming - John Field

               Global Warming

Everything as unreal as real can be.

Wallace Stevens

Last night in the comfort of my sleep

I had that dream again:

It’s cool and bright outside

Like the stage-set for a Technicolor movie

About the love affair I’m having

With the morning.

After breakfast

I’ve got the future in my pocket

As I stroll past hills decked out in daffodils

Which delight my eyes

Each time they flash

Their little trumpet smiles at me.

Now comes the hard part of my dream:

Suddenly and for no good reason at all

A heat wave turns my macadam road

Into a river of asphalt and tar

I’m wading in up to my knees,

So I seek shelter beneath a tree,

Knowing a chair will be there,

Stiff-backed to keep my spine upright

While I listen to the wind

Heave through every dying thing

On earth----after which the landscape’s

Not worth looking at,

Just the piecemeal junk

Of crumbling smokestacks

Belching lethal fumes in the air

Which transform the sky

Into a black hole

Only a death mask could survive.

Reminds me

Big things really matter

Because time is running out.      

            --------------

There are those whom only the dead

Can afford to forgive

Because they believe trees

Belong in museums instead of parks,

Animals in zoos.

Ecology is not one of their physical sciences.

Others exist solely for their self-completion

At drink-time: Hello, just fine, ta ta

And so forth onward to the very end.

Insist the bottom line

Is all that counts----easy math

Because only fools play by the rules of the game.

Condemn environmentalists to death

And leave it up to nature

To carry out their execution.

The rest of us shrug off the odds

And carry on----sign petitions,

Watch children at their play

And pray that when the final bill arrives

Its obscene total

Will be discretely folded over.      

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