Pull down the water.
Keep out the dying animals.

Ask the bees, blind, to heel.
Plants understand

touch. Brush their stalks
to sleep, a small girl's

recess hair. Tell the juke
joint owners to open

their doors. Pick one bud,
wear it in a shoe until

your field is strong and wild
and finally here.

Men think they've tamed the wild
with their ploughs mauling dirt,

their gears keeping time
by the hushed cracks

of even handed ticks. They've invented
factories that churn pesticides,

mutate tomatoes until    
they resist both God and drought.

Our skies choke on drags of smoke,
our polar ice caps liquefy—

They thought they could make
everything stay.