Leafspeak

Asphalt or concrete entire beneath my feet,
while trees just line the roads alone, divided
as convicts too dangerous to congregregate
or grumble in anger over brash new weather.
Neither soil nor sand, forest nor jungle, soften
my footstep or view, while all the food I eat
travels an impossible 1500 miles by tanker
and tractor trailer to my dinner plate, the last
farm of strawberries visible on my way to work
condemned to new cement for condo tracts.
Earth fevers to kill the all-devouring virus
with no other host organism we can leap to
after a blue planet turns lifeless slate carcass.
Where we lived rose up in hurricanes, typhoons,
drought, fire, floods, tornadoes, all manner
of crop failure, disease and dirty water,
oceans, lakes and rivers gone to desert
with far less movement than you’d find
on the broiling sand mid-day, 125º F.
Climate once was a mountain, untethered
now so the Mojave feels free to move over
the Sierra Nevadas into the Central Valley,
great green source of half our food. Worse,
much worse, is now ordained, but unknown
to us who refused to worship undemanded,
and must pay for our easy hubris, as God
will one day make me the trembling leaf
with one glance from Her empty nests.