POEMS/ A Lesson from Ovid 

A Lesson from Ovid

ils spills are spreading, their poison
eating through our waters, their greedy fingers
reaching to devour the marshes, the inlets,
deltas, beaches, to soak the feathers
of the gannet, tern, pelican, egret, snowy plover
till they are flightless, and suffocate shrimp,
crabs, menhaden, snappers, groupers.
But still we drill, our need for oil insatiable,
unquenchable, our comfort, our mobility
continually famished. It is as if our very blood
were oil, and when a rig explodes and spills,  
we birth a plague that cannot be contained,
profaning our own “holy places” as once,
the poet says, Eyrsichthon, King of Thessaly did,
who dared to topple an ancient sacred oak of Ceres,
his sacrilege repaid by all-consuming famine
that filled him, planting a hunger in him
that he could not sate, his gaping crop
forever emptying and filling, and when his wealth  
was gone he even sold his daughter to buy food  
that could not satisfy the gnawing in his gut,
until at last to pacify the raging hunger
in his belly’s hollow cavern, he fed upon himself. 
 
From All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)

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