Poem by Ed Zahniser

​Comment
Mea Culpa

—for Stewart Brand at 80

The bank marquee reads 77 degrees at 6:22 a.m.
Skies are overcast except for slim breaks north and east.
A sparrow or wren walks for a quarter block in front of me,
I think to lead me away from a nest at its personal risk.
So much for humans' corner on altruism, the lack of which
does not quell but propagates hunger across the globe.

Oil-bought politicians be damned for heating the world
—and us for not voting them out of office with cars
run on solar power to underscore the EX in Exxon.
Meanwhile—and the while is ever mean to have-nots--
great swaths of Earth turn deserts, and rivers run dry
as ice caps melt and oceans rise, warm, and acidify.

Why can’t we commit our backs to the political plow
to alter the trajectory of the Clock of the Long Now?

Ed Zahniser has published six books of poetry, including Mall-hopping with the Great I AM and Confidence in Being and other poems (2018). He retired as senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group. He is poet laureate of Shepherdstown, WV.

Picture of Ed is a "photo posterization by Tom Taylor."

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