Typewriters Were Subject To Police Registration, But Not Guns

for Carmen Bugan

 

Future geologists––clear evidence implicates the human race

For accelerating reductions in the diversity of the fossil record.

You will find this evidence in the layers defining the Anthropocene.

You may not know of our wildfires by name or the names of our

Seastorms & towns brought to their knees,

But you will uncover the relics of our self-destruction,

The exponential tragedies created as our tools advanced.

You’ll find it was our activity that pushed all Earth’s

Bioregions to the Hot Side.

You’ll know it was us who rolled the dice.

The geologic record will spell it out.

You’ll observe a layer of atomic weapon testing programs from

The 1940s through 1950s, chlorine in ice cores from the 1960s, a layer

Of mercury linked to coal plants in the 1980s.

Our soils grow sickened by human activity––

Land-leveling, trenching, embankment, ploughing,

Fertilization, weed killers, organic matter impoverishment,

Overgrazing, erosion, drought, genetically modified crops,

Containments, dams, sea barriers, desertification,

Worldwide event strata of contamination and sealing.

 

Future geologists, when you come upon that

First carcass of a typewriter, know this––

We threw roses to the white-gowned moon.

The paper we typed on came from wood.

Many writers were tortured for their thoughts

As well as making them known, telling the truth,

Risking their lives, dying for their words.

 

 

28 March 2013

 

 

[Published in The Groundless Ground: Poems 2010-2014.

© 2014 by Jim Cohn.]