Earth Day

Oh battered blue ball, you dusty eye –

you crinkled skin – you knob of a world,

scudding recklessly on solar winds;

falling toward a star that is

falling toward the center of a

falling galaxy: Oh my dear, sad, beaten thing:

Home of all homes, sea of all seas –

your secret fire, your burning nickle and iron heart

your scabbed skin of puckered continents,

your incontinent earthquakes, throwing bookshelves

and glass onto Japanese sofas–

Oh dear sweet wavering poisoned darling,

shuddering with the heave of time, crawling

with humans earnest and evil, cankered and sublime,

shaker of faiths, herald of covenants,

flooder of basements, spinner of

magnetic webs and borealic fancies –

Oh, whirler of cloud and rainscape,

twirler of lightning, sower of darnel and grain,

windsweeper, deathkeeper, infolder of hallows –

my poor dear

dirty-faced boy:

come, come home: your dinner is ready,

the light is going, rest

is sweet.