...

earth day

is an unfinished apology

for the 80,000 new synthetic concoctions

conjured up since WW II and each year,

1500 more become a human health revision,

their remainder left in toys and in computers,

recomposites in the air, stuffed into food,

contaminating dust, and babies' bodies breathing in and out,

persistent bioaccumulative toxic chemicals exposed

and unexpressed until I sit beside a strobing screen

to write this poem, departed poets piled on my desk

their graphite swords, their moral passage

past imprisonment for writing less than this