Postponed Wilderness

Danielle Walczak

The largest stadium in the world is
empty today.

It’s snowing and
a girl carries her iced coffee to class in both a
plastic and Styrofoam cup.

Sliced in half an onion looks like a topographic map
snow banks are mountain ranges.

When the snow melts it reveals our trash in the median.

We mediate a river in order to direct telephone poles
that were once trees, down it.

Before a bridge a river is chaos.

In spring never underestimate the river’s ability
to rise.

In 2014 the United States congress voted down
twenty-five acts of “proposed wilderness.”
Gaining the ever so telling, not of nature,
but of us, title
“Postponed wilderness.”

Postponed wilderness.

A river is chaos before a bridge.

In Arizona the largest stadium in the world is empty today.

An artic tern flies 7,700 miles a year to have two homes.

The whale uses the coast as a guardrail.

The monarch sacrifices its life to fly away.

Teachers are begging their students to stop being so apathetic.

In autumn we set the blueberry fields on fire
later a family feud will be settled in Maine
it’s hunting season.

In October we drain rivers to make snow.
In March we wish it away
Make the snow
Clean the roads
Salt the earth
Repeat
Repeat

It’s hunting season and rain
selects rocks to weather
we select caffeine or booze
to smooth the edge of inbox entropy.

Every outdoor speech, protests and march, invades the doorstep of the homeless.
They are putting spikes under bridges to lock them out.

Chair lifts are shifting backwards on mountains.
Gravity tests those who push her limits.

I want to wear a crown
but I’ve yet to be convinced I’m made of sand.

We are all made of the same material
different forms.

The seas are rising!
The mountains are rising!
Submit
Submit.
Submit.
The weeds are rising.