Some days I feel like we are all being swept downstream
Imbibing pollution in what we eat and drink and breathe
Sickening us in ways we don't fully understand
Captives in our fouled nest our planet earth.
My vision looking down from the bridge at Dunkerhook
Where the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook joins the Saddle River
Watching the mallards that make their home here
Living a few miles downstream from the sewer treatment.
Thinking of the filled septic tanker trucks we see arriving
To flush their collected contents into that facility
Across from the Giant Farmers Market store
Where we go to shop for fresh produce.
When it hasn't rained or has rained a lot
We can smell the sewage there on the bridge
Even after treatment to remove certain pathogens
But today I am focused on the odorless medicine in it.
Those ducks are host to the H1N1 bird flu deadly to us
Ingesting this water laced with Tamiflu antiviral pills
Passed through human urine and bypassed by treatment
Causing the virus to mutate and develop resistance.
Closing the loop back on us everywhere we turn
What we and they consume is what we produce
Pesticides and herbicides and exhaust fumes
PFAs and PCBs and all the chemical alphabet soup.
Even so I think a technical solution is possible
If only we do away with this political economic system
And turn loose human ingenuity on the problem
To create a sustainable cycle for all life to thrive.
The tension between what is and what might be
Infiltrates into every conversation about existence
Forcing its way into consciousness against all resistance
Compelling intervention to take control of the future.
