Animal Magic by Robert Knox

Your problems, amigo, are my problems, and as

lead-diesel traffic poisons the clean dry air of Lebanon,

Arabia, New Mexico, the high country of survivalist communes,

inscribing Qumran manuscripts on impermeable stone

As patrons-in-chief protect corporate paymasters

with the semi-automatic weaponry of moving lips, sacred lies --

I worship trees instead!

I see branches splintering the windshields of stranded

SUVs on the Highway to Disaster

I root for the birds and the whales,

who push our plastic offal back onshore

with their intellectual beaks and noses,

spectacularly wide-rim spectacles

shading the binocular eyes of animal spirits

The rim islands of desiccated capitals

from Capetown to the Galapagos

harvest the plastic feces of the sea to build walls

of old promises, unpaid IOUs gripped

in the bleeding hands of our Mother Irked,

evacuating her vowels

for use in some better word

All one ocean,

one blue breathing tent

formed by physical raptures of Time in her billions

exhaling her appassionatas of beauty and prayer

fabricating the little island of organic existence

which still we turn to garbage every day

No Mas! Plastic People,

coal-burning hill-creatures

            ...Jetsers, poets, pals of all description

Get out of your vehicle &

            walk

This way

     to the Inflamo

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, and Boston Globe correspondent. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal, Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, New Verse News, Unlikely Stories, and others. His poetry chapbook "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty" was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. He was named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.