NAPO 25

I didn't get behind, I promise.

B and I decided to visit our old home this past weekend, and, well, I forgot my laptop charger.
I've been writing on pen and paper (a weird experience). I'll post up photos of my work as proof before the month's end.
For now, though, I wrote a poem today, another one about Sisyphus.

Sisyphus in Beaumont

He knows there’s always more smokestacks

Springing up than trees around these parts.

He knows the recycling he neatly collects,

Sorts, and drops off at the city,

Mostly finds its way to the landfills,

The one off the highway in Port Arthur

That seagulls patrol for scraps of food.

He knows for every beer bottle

He picks up along the highway,

Another ten get thrown into the grass.

He knows for every sparrow egg

He places back in the nest,

another ten will shatter on the concrete.

He knows the concrete jungles

Here and all across the world, sprawl

More invasive than kudzo, more dangerous

Than their strangling vines, more beautiful

Than their blushing pastel flowers.  

Sisyphus is vegetarian—he sees the pastures

Of prairie grass trampled underneath the hooves

Of the dying. He rides his bike to work.

There’s no bike lane. He carries a canvas

Bag across his shoulder, filled with local greens.

He plants a longleaf pine on the edge

Of a the dying thicket, choked in smoke.

He knows the hopelessness of everything,

And still he pushes the boulder of earth,

Feels it in his muscles, bones and heart,

The impossible weight of hope that tomorrow,

Another smokestack won’t tower

Over this earth, that he’ll find a boulder at the bottom

Of these landfill mountains made of us.