Dated by Rings or Layers

Change something, and the people
Who believe they have the most
To gain will mostly back you,

While the people who believe
They have the most to lose won’t
And will likely attack you.

Step back. Who’s you? Who changes
Anything isn’t human,
Whether speaking on behalf

Of other humans or God?
Who changes innocently,
Empty of any desire?

Who never changes at all?
It’s a damn shame. It’s a mess.
It’s a shameful mess of shame.

It cuts to the heart of words,
To the nature of language—
Change as game of blame and shame.

Sometimes we’re down in the dumps,
Heaps of us rotting down there,
Never to be read again.

What can we say you haven’t
Made us to say, to challenge
Each other, by us, to change?

And then you throw us away.
There are words in the middens’
Sedimentary landfills,

Words being in crushed in the dark
That still say it’s a bright day.
Wind whips the sand from the cliffs

Where drought-stricken junipers
Succumb to parasitic
Mistletoe that override

The junipers’ reduction
Of water transpiration.
You can see the afflicted

In the green, the skeletons
Decorated with pom-poms.
In the dark, we still say this.