washington clear cuts

those receding hairlines
mountains trimmed, shaven
pock marked faces
erosion come land slide

as i cycled that bicycle to witness
those blank faces
mirrored many of those in
those cars

"why is that fool on teh bicycle smiling"
i could almost here them say
"he's not even there yet" (the park, the destination)
and I would laugh an explanation
that cycle touring is about being where you are
sometimes even less than where you're going,
kinda like my thoughts on life
enjoyment

smiling towards the surrounding, replanted, devestation
i laughed at the falling of the limited seed stock
filling valleys with a half dozen gene sequences
foolish to see a forest as trees, and even more foolish
to not see those trees as the result of millions of years
revolutions of this star, this sun
an infinite, like salmon,
being out competed, sponsored by human involvement
tree planting and hatchery
let's not fool ourselves, we're coping, not helping
for our work is not to procreate the fish, the trees,
but to live our responsibility

____________________

Charles Dickens writes in Coketown Hardtimes (1854) 1969 p.65

"Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create even more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise...
Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of Capitalism
Poor [americans] see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"