Peter Galen Massey

how will the world end
with rust and poisoned water
or with new green leaves
some say doomsday is doomsday
and all ends in dust and death

but i don’t think so
more potent than our machines
is potent nature
the meditations of time
and the patience of the earth

these will puff away
cities and shopping plazas
turnpikes parking lots
strip mines factories and mills
like white dandelion seeds

drifting in the air
and garbage dumps will blossom
as fresh young edens
with new souls in new soft flesh
walking on the tender grass

here we find the proofs
where a daisy rises like
a defiant fist
to protest the oil tanks
beyond the screen of the trees

where the seething throb
of the stalled diesel engine
on the trestle bridge
is drowned to extinction by
the riot of singing birds

where green fields flourish
next to empty warehouses
and abandoned homes
where three feet of good soil
is a world all to itself

we are mistaken
in time in scale in vastness
in our selfish lives
after the gasoline burns
there will be roses again