Impact

I am fitted with disaster. It shapes every curve, every cell of the brain, contours of my body, gait of each step. Clip, clop, I trod through it each day winding my way through short spits of headlines that gut punch and tighten the chest just enough to lead me to the baby aspirin bottle, just in case. I am at once a polar bear, clawing at a piece of ice no longer able to bear my weight; I am a butterfly searching for the milkweed no longer there; I am a wolf witnessing the massacre of my pups; the rivers, the ocean, the glaciers, the reefs, the critters, the everything touches me and I feel it, deeply. If my head could explode it would. Another run to the pantry for ibuprofen. I am spent, both witness and participant to a self-serving, grab and go civilization, nonsensically cock-eyed and lurching toward burn-out. My RSS feed keeps me abreast of every new ecological disaster or heartbreaking tragedy involving beaks and fur and horns and antlers and stripes and shells and wings and fins and the mommies and the babies, oh how the mommies and the babies can cut clean through to the amygdala. And the drip, drip, drip of the oil and the 350 parts per million and the Keystone, the pipelines, the pipedreams, the pied piper of planetary madness, the corporation suckling its stock holders on a tasteless teet. It's all so disappointing. If I had a tail I would be chasing it around and around trying to find a grip, a steady state. No tail, no grip, no steady state, no steady gait. So, I plant milkweed and fuss over Monarch caterpillars. That's the only kind of impact I have. A few caterpillars, a few butterflies, a few more eggs laid, many more caterpillars, many more butterflies, many more eggs. It's not enough, but it's something. I'm sorry I can't do more. But, it's something, some kind of impact.