Things got worse. Summer rotted on the vine
while I found myself in Phoenix learning to drink Mexican beer
and waiting for the time to rise. It never rose,
kept getting punched back and postponed
until the yeast all died and the salt lost its flavour.
We were still calling the radio station
begging them to give us vengeance, glory, revolution.
Didn't know the phone was tapped—
the calls dried up as the draft left the keg,
as the drafted died instead, expired.
We didn't know, our fathers and their fathers
forgot for us their fathers' sins
and planted the seeds, though they just barely took root.
We grew up paralyzed but not from the waist down;
we didn't fall off a horse. What we did was never move at all.
When the forest fires were banned we lost our last sign:
the sight of a sapling pushing through the ashes.
Instead the forests are petrifying now
even as we are petrified, scared witless
with all our wit a stinking heap for vultures and crows.
Teach me the most natural things! I promise
I'll even give up my tendencies to match
a bolt with a bolt and not a socket, if the socket
will get us by, at least until the harvest.
Thanks to passport for giving me the idea. | 
