Equinox, An Autumn Poem

by Brett Rutherford

The whole planet lights up.

It has a smoke.

It doesn't care

if it dies, lives

for the moment.

Peat, lumber, coal,

fracked gas and petrol,

dead leaves

and human ash

inhale and ex —

drill, baby

coughing its

sputter clouds,

smoke rings

to its last gasp,

melt-stained

with receding

glaciers, pimpled

with eruptions

of nickel-dime

volcanos;

killing its pets,

and setting fire

to its parent forests,

it is an addict,

indifferent;

its breath reeks,

the doom of carbon

exhuming itself

from the fossil record.

Is this what happens

on every Blue Planet?