God Particle
Let’s say it’s true, maybe, that the warblers’
early arrival at the hedgerow, or hundred year floods
three years running, or the torched forest growing
acre by acre, minute by minute, mean nothing.
Winter came after all, and yes, I remember
that spring snowfall years ago when the garden,
already starting to blossom, was covered
by whiteout well past Easter. Let’s say shit happens,
that one bad apple is just an apple, not a sanction
against future harvests, that islands of immortal
plastic choking the Atlantic are just an emblem
of our love for plastic, and love can’t be denied.
Celebrate with me then, the grand accomplishments
of clearcuts, the smoldering old mine fires
condemning whole towns by anthrocide.
We’ve connected the world by beams
and waves, sent animals of all kinds caged
into airless space. Excavated the underworld
to tunnel away our waste and built one thousand
and one ways to kill a mouse.
We’ve opened the god particle
and lived to see its light is merely another
light we have to shade our eyes from
before something inside us burns.
Grant Clauser is the author of several books, including Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. He lives in Pennsylvania where he works as an editor and teaches poetry at Rosemont College.
(Photo courtesy of Alex Cope)
