I just substitute taught
music to kindergarteners
crazy wild-haired college teacher
radical journalist, fifty-seven
so many lamentations . . . .
“I was in that Mexican town
when it was just a sleepy
fishing village . . . or climbed into a cloud
forest in Vietnam when the f
was still in forest and c did
not mean contaminants … and
off Belize, you can’t imagine the lemon
sharks, before the Asians ramped up
shark-fin soup . . . .”
*-*
there were bongos
xylophones
tambourines
piano, the kids coming
in expecting docile subservience
common core curriculum
*-*
but it’s earth day
went traveling from Portland
to rural landscape
elementary school in the middle
of farms, McMansions and old farm
houses, four-vehicle garages
and tool sheds next to pigs
huge waves of Canada geese
and four eagles on thermals
passing tractors and llama farms
a coyote ducked under sheep
fence, grandfather ravens
picked at possum road
kill, amazing flower, tulips
SUVs delivering children
*-*
we sang sun songs
took the rusty piano chords from
a is for aardvark to z is for
zebra, and all animals in between
n was tricky, but they got the narwhal
and x, well, they got yak for y
and then xantis for another yak
some third grader thought x-ray fish
was cool, and instead of z for zebra
I pulled the bongos in and said,
“z is for Zapalapadingdong
I am a small rat with big ears
and I eat insects, now back to a is
for armadillo and b is for bat . . . .”
*-*
so there it is, one morning, mourning
some of those places, reefs that are
eutrophication reminders
stag horn corals knocked over
like a meteor-smashed boreal forest
China Beach Vietnam and Quintana
Roo, luxury ships and tankers raking
entire ecosystems for the junk of the
ages, the endless plastic tides
*-*
where do they go now, six-year-olds
fed the spoon of silicone mastery
screens that burst with animated
energy, stories lifted from warped
brains of Hollywood types
animals that are cartoons, jiving
and full of street talking weirdness
super-animated scenes of dinosaurs
saddled up by Adam, Eve plucking
pterodactyl feathers for a headdress?
*-*
these children are deer, stuck in the head
lights of progress, days locked inside humming
cloud servers, stuck to piping hot keyboard
stuck in a world of digital dictation
drowned by the very essences of social
media, the boring becoming the honored
their parents pushing their little kid questions
about armadillos – lizard or rodent – into Google
each and every burp and blip from Facebook
a discovery for their big sisters, aunts
*-*
they have a wonderful world, 58-inch
plasma TVs, shark week like some spaghetti
western, divers smiling like Clint Eastwood
the cuts and editing like some info-mercial
but these little singers, well, they didn’t
know it’s earth day, that Rachel Carson fought
for them and Lois Gibbs is still fighting
or that Paul Watson works for animals
not people, or that there are journalists fighting
the green is the new red scare tactics
of multi-national food thugs
calling us eco-terrorists
as if Obama and Osama and Kissinger and Carter
and laughing hyena Clintons are the zoo keepers
*-*
they hope to live in a virtual circus
one day meet Shamu, or have a ride with
dolphins, maybe a swing with orangutans, but never
a neck hug by your neighborhood friendly ball
python . . . . when is it they should know about clouds
transpiration . . . water and super storms
and well teaching them to turn their backs
on the little climate change lies of adults?
*-*
work-work hard, study-study more
and follow your elders and listen
to authority, and just do your work and keep head
down . . . white picket fence, new Mustang
in driveway, work-consume-spit out- throw away
do the capitalist thing, sweet children
whose songs capture innocence
that should be leading armies
innocence that would turn hell
into heaven
when do these little singers and bongo
players get to make it up
take the world through the a-b-c’s
laugh at J is for Japanese macaque
and W is for wombat C for civet
*-*
Mother Nature we sang about
I played chords while 20 kids each
session made musical sounds
pantomimed like the animal
of their dreams
extinct, long on endangered lists
we sang for aardwolf
Barasingha deer made them laugh
caiman and coatimundi they got
stories from their 57-year-old radical
substitute banging out simple
tunes on piano
*-*
watching sun shadows
above, as kids in kindergarten
and third grade seemed like the
answer to the mayhem
they seem like the reason to
fight for earth
for every day
letting the generals and CEOs
back into their cages
throwing bits of plastic
and hydrocarbon for their meals
the giants of IT and GMOs
they would be good elephant
shovelers, just the right shape for
the concessions
*-*
so all the animals
running free
might see the poachers dead
or hanging from banana trees
all of those children
in charge now, and all they want
is a zorilla or zorro to end
a song, so they can sing
it over and over
until all those insects
and mammals
the floating marine creatures
until they all have names
all have songs
while the despots and politicians
the harbingers of private equity
are behind bars, zoos, open air
the mites more mighty than a billionaire
scabies rendering the hippest Hollywood
megalomaniac
into a Kafkaesque
hunger artist
while the kids sing
“ring around the rosey
a pocket full of posies”