heat flow

 

dome of life

please yes restore us

get us breathing with you

or there’s nothing for us

how we humans toil and roil, burn and boil

while giant sequoia trees just trying to breathe

gigantic thousand year old beings

and the earth just spinning, spinning, spinning

 

we can’t bear this dome of life

with a foundation of low wage misery

we won’t bear this dome of life

with self-as-center posts and beams

we’ll never bear this dome of life

when human suffering’s heavier than gravity

 

as every day the earth keeps spinning like

humans, get the job done

if you can’t there’s gonna be a problem

 

it’s just that we figured it out

we already know

how this atmospheric shelter above us glows and grows

solar, hydrous, terranean, gaseous

lattice of the living, bio-crystalline

pushing back, protecting us

from frigid interstellar darkness

what’s the use saying fuck this, we out

searching for a planet b that hasn’t been found

on a spaceship that hasn’t been built

like an excuse for the earth we killed

no use pretending ignorance about why the blue sky’s blue

as if we’re all dumb beasts slobbering helpless at the feast

blaming mother nature for our dis-ease

 

as every hour the earth keeps spinning like

humans, what’s the problem?

nature’s gonna find someone else if you can’t get the job done

 

every moment every living being

bears the weight and creates the dome of life

we humanity can be the dominant apex species

the boss, the manager, an architect, a protector

the farmer, the shepherd

or humanity can be just another life form laid to rest

we came, we went, it was sorta fun, the end

but humanity cannot be both a savior and a failure

trying to save ourselves by failing everything else

like a parasite asking it’s host “hey you ok with dying?”

 

“i am the most powerful, intelligent species, made in the image of god

i have providence and dominion over all the earth has to offer

all the flora, all the fauna

i will plow and dig and cut and burn and stake and take what is mine at will and…

oh oh, but wait, wait, i’m supposed to handle

decisions, responsibilities and management like the top species granted dominion?

no no, remember, i’m just a dumb animal, a poor helpless beast

can’t think, nothing but instinct, not my job, don’t ask me, i lost the keys”

 

i own a car, my freakin’ lights work

every day this writer lives with, works with, uses, employs hydrocarbons

i’m human, most definitely not perfect

but is the future really to be found in regression and aversion

living perfectly in a cave with nothing

like some holier-than-thou judgement

demanding others change their lives

before they’ve even changed their minds

or opening views that are frozen and closed in

raging with blame, or engaging them to change

hey, you’re the captain, are you ok with sinking?

 

as every minute the earth keeps spinning like

humans, just get the job done

nature’s hiring someone else if you’re gonna be the problem

 

we will build, push up, sustain this dome of life

with buttresses of shared reality

all compressions, all tensions, all the weight

all the problems, all the solutions

born by a living structure of different beings

different beings inches away from you

thousands of miles away from me

connecting sustaining growing giving taking thriving

we will build, push up, sustain this dome of life

with questions big enough

with math big enough

frickin’ screens big enough

calculations, engineering, technology, data sets, models

answers

big enough

for all the life of life on earth

we will build, push up, sustain this dome of life

with rhythms of breathing

one breathes out what

another breathes in

 

as every second the earth keeps spinning, spinning, spinning

and we work out who’s to blame

or we work together and get the job done

 

for the park rangers of sequoia and kings canyon national parks

for what william shatner had to say

before being interrupted by champagne

about the view of earth from above