from ELECTROPOEMS, released April 12, 2022
When someone asks you
why it hurts the earth
to pull one flower
from a field of flowers,
tell them you are the lilac
or the hibiscus,
growing and sunbathing
in a community of natural color,
and you know a lot of kinfolk
who have the same roots. Tell them
your kind of people are earth
people, and if there’s anything
you know, it’s the pain of one
of your petals being picked,
of your homelife disrupted by
fires, bugs, concrete, or men
who are too distracted by what’s above them.
Men who are too focused on
skylines to notice their dirty shoes
walking on sacred ground.
So, yes - when one of us is uprooted
or displaced from the soil
that raised us, we feel it. Tell them,
“You would feel it,
too - especially if the flower
looked like you, or was
anywhere close to the
same hue.”