Nature Poems

My Legacy


A thousand generations

have laboured for progress

I am the first

with pesticides in my fat

radioactive strontium and

cesium in my bones

nitrous oxide and

asbestos in my lungs

mirex in my muscles

dioxin in my wine 

______

Censored

 

I hung a word

on an old pine tree

  they cut down the tree 

I strung my word

on a pine sapling 

they pushed down the sapling 

I placed the word

by a pine seedling 

they plowed down the seedling

I traced my word

on the sun-baked soil

it blew away

______

Long Live the King

A new road pierces the wilderness

a young bull moose mounts the invader

a truck horn blares

the moose bugles

the truck charges

the moose charges

a King is born

______

A coal miner’s test

An over-heated “No-stick Treated” pot

emits hot fumes that she assumes will not

be harmful till the vapours kill her lot

of caged canaries

______

Lakehood

A lake

needs a loon

to laugh with the moon

to be a lake

______

Unfathomable

 

 I wish i could draw

 a political cartoon

of a noble whale

in a concrete jail

prodded to perform

to lunge from the water

as the audience cheers

a whale trainer

prancing dancing

on the whale’s nose

a bruised nose

my brother’s nose

______

Signs

Wild animals in the stars

wild animals in the clouds

what will we see in them

when the wild ones are gone

______

A Matter of Taste

A partridge in a pine tree

exquisite to see

a budworm in a pine tree

repugnant to me

a budworm in a partridge

a delicacy

______

Untitled Couplets

The large fierce animals are dead

the meek inherit earth instead

we say in an arrogant way

that we are much smarter than they

sly nature plays a trick each time one dreams of love as love sublime

for love is nature’s prank we face, her ruse to reproduce each race

a snapping turtle snaps at me

“dioxin saps virility”

follow the trail of the fox

to tell the tale of the fox


Animated Nature Poems

The text for these computer-generated poems was digitized, rotated, coloured and flipped using animation software.  These animated poems can be viewed in your browser if you have Shockwave Flash installed on your system. 

BUTTERFLY BEAUTIFLY BEAUTIFUL, the first animated poem in this series, was created in 1987 and animated in 2000.  

Click on the titles below to bring these poems to life.  Afterwards, press the “back” button of your browser to return to this page.


butterfly_00abc_bookpoetry_in_motion