Ode to Science # 4
( Our Wounded Planet)

What a dear lonely globe,
this most precious wounded planet,
a broken home to us all
grateful and ungrateful alike.
Im trying to take off my illusions for you
strip down to wehere skin meets fern spores.
I am learning to trust my senses,
reject traditional opinions,
test hypotheses in the light of day
let the sun shine on ‘clear and distinct ideas’.
Earth,
I want to be strong enough to see you as you are.
I have already faced the loss of myth.
All the god’s are gone,
Jesus gone, Buddha gone, Plato’s dreams,
Hinduism, Thunder Beings, goddesses,
Dasien, Atma, all gone….
and gone too, a faith in capital and Marx and
all those figments, fictions
all gone…..
I look at wildflowers alone,
the beauty way is not Navaho---
no one owns it---
the tree frog calls out in the rain
and the earth under my feet, at last,
alone with our earth---
---try to really feel the lonely winter of this ---
the wonder of standing and existing on this exact patch of earth---
this, where you are, is all there is---
this endangered patch---
our earth and those who are upon it---
together, you and me and our earth
you and me and the baby and earth
you and me and swallows and clouds,
the sound of water
and the sad goodbye
to those who we loved that are dying,
our cat is dying, my mother is dying.....

So this is it, this all there is,
a Jerusalem Cricket dying on our sidewalk,
no afterlife for a cricket or for me,
this lonely day and the flowers still blooming
and the strength it took to give up those illusions
to face the empty facts of my full life
and saying yes to suffering and beauty at last,
and this salt and sand chiseled driftwood
we brought home from the ocean
this need to make a place for our baby to grow up,
this love of sea life, octopi, sunflower sea stars,
here is where science begins
in the love of the sad sea
the infinity of a world  that is not a dream,---
--- life was never a dream,
such expanses of unknown space,
raw stones,
cities with too many people, roadkills,
days lost in dazed memories
and the small hope that we will come
to understand it, make the world better
for the coming people, protect nature,
let forests return, save Madagascar Lemurs,
stop the meat crazed logging in the Amazon,
 free rivers of dams
hold on to what is lovable
about this dear planet.
Only do science that does no harm,
refuse the rest.
Science begins where
we face the lonely earth
I open my hands open to the flourishing rainbow sky
and wake up to the preciousness of each being,
each flower,
these days and lives that will never be again.
Yes, say yes to helping others
on this strange and fragile planet
so many sad faces suffering
so many flowers, and sunsets
under so many beautiful stars.
 
May, 07

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