what’s impossible

this place will not be this way forever

we can only forget ourselves for so long

the ground beneath our feet demands our
attention as we keep looking for ways to pierce the sky

and it wasn’t so long ago that we did not
think in terms of how many decades it would
take for the earth to recover,

it couldn’t have been so long ago that
we did not think in terms of how many would
have to die for us to keep our way of life

i see the farmer
standing at the edge of
a field he watched his grandfather plow,
a field he helped his father plant,
a field he had seen his children run in
a field he can no longer plow for fear of the
poison that flows into the earth
for the sake of a lightbulb

i see the question
in his eyes, the city skyline
in the back of his mind, i see the lines
of his palm losing the streaks of dirt
he thought would be there ’til the day he died,
i see him wondering
what now?

and i know that we can’t
go on the same way anymore
i know that we won’t
it is only a matter
of how quickly
we’ll move.