A short poem commenting on the relationship between man and earth.
I wake to wind and burning coals inside my chest, a ribbon the color of cardinal feathers tied to my ring finger. Although I rise, expecting to hear the morning hymn of birdsong, I see the moon, casting rays of white across the bellows of the asphalt streets. I question the nightfall, and take time to close my eyelids, expecting the warmth of sunlight to caress my cheek. But the warmth doesn’t show, and I am left with fractals of ice and silence. I wander out to the road, my ribbon finding its way around my middle finger, and I survey the stance of a streetlight, a fixture that threatens the earth underneath my feet. Crafted by the hands of man, towering with rusted, chipping paint, insects tapping mindlessly against its pale glowing light. The beaming sound the light produces seems to mesmerize all that surround it, a structure that pulses electricity from jagged metal containments, imprisoning the power born by the sky. But as I look beyond this one, stray light, and I see the sun hiding behind the moon. It waves at me with its bright and glowing orange fingers and I think to myself why is the sun hiding? My ribbon covers my hand now, and my memories come back to me. The sun is hiding because it has given up. But it acknowledges me, knowing that my memory ribbon reminds me of mankind’s crimes against the earth. A lone, knowing soul, like a drop of scarlet red into a bucket of pure blackness. A conduit for revenge, the seeds of rebel dandelions crushed under steel-toe boots. The sun vanishes once more and the moon stares back coldly, passive like the sharp sight of an unflinching soldier. All I am left with is the streetlight, cutting deeply into the flesh of the earth.