isn't it romantic?
I’ve tried to walk in woods like Wordsworth
did with Dorothy, his sister and stenographer,
but no one will accompany me
with pen and paper so I go, a goon, alone.
A different time, a different place, a space age
of inventions stretching from their sooty time
to the particulates afloat in mine.
I do the same thing with Thoreau, my weirdo
hero: moon, idealize, say progress
isn’t what it’s been cracked up to be,
and tell whomever I am drinking with
the wheel, the light bulb, and the particle
accelerator ruined everything.
But even if you advocate clean coal
and do not mind the disappearance
of the mountaintops and the impossible
logistics of containing slurry;
even if you champion the push
to try our hand at going nuclear again
and do not fear the half life;
[....]