For Ballantine




There is a woman in a garden

peeling iridescent beetles off of exotic plants

to place them in a dark bag

where insecticide slowly fills their delicate air ways

and they exhale the last time

tasting fate that Martha Stewarts everywhere

have concocted for them

[Invasive]

 

My mother was Martha Stewart once,

or at least she certainly tried.

In fourth grade I dumped out the death sacks and told the six legged, wheezing stragglers to go forth, 

Survive!
 

I cried on the car ride to a play date ten minutes later 

explaining what I had done

expressing my first opinions on a word I did not yet understand-

genocide is a relative term,

sometimes it's pest control.

 

And my poor, perplexed mother.

She has always been spectacular,

or at least she certainly tried.

So the flowerbeds took to growing snake nests and toad homes

the rose bushes acted like Vietnam vets 

every summer when the beetles came back.
 

[Invasive]
 

I remember the first time I looked at my woods

A product of statewide irresponsible logging

and realized that it was a teenager

very similar to myself

with japanese honeysuckle armpit hair,

aggressive red maple acne,

multiflora rose braces,

and the stereotypical poor distribution of mass:

lanky here, 

overgrown there

and still no idea what to wear. 
 

The saplings crawling over each other 

being starved of sunlight as quickly as they are grown 

like randomly falling in love with the waiter at Olive Garden

Only to be caught fantasizing about a stranger on the other side of the room thirty seconds later. 

These forests are a nation of confused adolescents out of control

Can you imagine?

It's kind of like placing Justin Beiber in the oval office-

Lord help us.

we apply this logic of black and white

beautiful and awful

to the most ambiguous and elaborate systems on earth 

a forest

A culture

a war

A woman

 

Nature does not stop at our quarky, seasonal door mats-

It is the chemicals you paint your nails with.

It is the clothes we hide our thrills with.

It is the shoes that mask feet that disregard the 

magnificence of calluses.

Starlings who migrate across acid rain skies

to sleep like black teeth on telephone wire smiles,

exist in impressive, destructive magnitudes

because we allow them to.

Because they will thrive as long as we do-

what with our intricate habitat

of pavement and plastic,

store bought grasses filled with delicious insects,

easy to spot predators and gun restrictions within the city limits.

Why are we so calm? 

Nodding solemnly in vague agreement to an NPR special

As we half heartedly complain about the sustainability of the very dinosaur juice from which we

religiously  fill the gas tanks

noting the ugly of the very tar beneath the wheels

burying the ruins of Indiana bat habitat

Myotis sodalis, my dearest, my dearest...

The best solution being a sizable donation

to a far away conservation fund

Somewhere

 

there are non for profit employees grappling to find an end to the means 

to which there is nothing left

but to wait for this stack of cards to quiver.

Till the day that there is no gas left 

for them to drive their cars into work

will there ever be a reason for them to not have to come into work that day.

And then have the nerve to say

[Invasive]

 

Look at what we are.

Look
at the wool 

that flashes on the evening news  

so that we can fall asleep at night.

Look
in the mirror 

at our selective breeding attributes 

our shrugged off promises

our comfortable facade

wrapped up and packaged tight in a Walmart sweater.

Do you smell the landfills?

Do you hear the algae blooms 

sucking the air out of our oceans' lungs?

Friends, 

look carefully

do you know

any 

invasive

species?