If I stood atop my stepladder with a bullhorn, screamed:
The Bramble Cay melomys died out last year!
how long it would take for one of my neighbors
to run
to my mother’s house, ring the bell, say,
Go get your daughter down before somebody calls the police.
We grew up hearing:
don’t panic, never let them see you sweat
but somebody has to do something, quick:
corporate palm oil production is deforesting
the Leuser ecosystem in Indonesia
for our
soap
laundry detergent
bread
lipstick
ice cream
margarine
shampoo
cookies.
Does anyone care about the
flooding,
landslides that bury people and their homes under mud
the orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos losing habitat
because now that I know
showers don’t quite soothe–
too busy watching the purl of water run down the drain,
wondering how long it will take to reach a dark ocean
devouring the sunlight that used to bounce off the Arctic sea ice/go back into space