Ecology Child

Born at the turn of the century
under a new moon,

the waters of her birth are muddy;
she carries pocketfuls of sky
where vultures circle.

She believes in magic,
smoothed from her fingers
into sand, stone, and soil,

but men have woven counterspells
for decades. Henry Ford's spores
lead the soil, rivers bleed
through walls of turbines.

The firmament has shed her soft veil
before the red eye of Orc, and he stirs
ancient gods of hurricane and flood.

Bodies swell through broken
beds of the ocean as the last oil
is leeched from the marrow of the earth.

This little girl sews with a fishbone needle
and a silver thread of light
along the fissure of dawn,
a lacework of memory
of how the globe used to be,
a refuge for bio-diversity.

As she sews she sings a nursery rhyme of A B C ...
remember, remember -

all that remains is this seedlike ember.