Migrants
Before I caught onto calendars
As a kid, I still knew there were
Special times,
Some of them happened
In late spring
And in the summer months, too –
Days would come when
The sky was filled
With such beings
As the tiny orange and black kites
Called Monarch Butterflies;
Or by furry moths;
Or by dragonflies;
Or by other flying things.
The years turn like pages
And the clouds of living bugs
Have been cleared from the skies,
Why do we treat our migrant insects
As badly as we do the human ones?
Common milkweed • verbena • showy milkweed
Butterfly milkweed • swamp milkweed • dandelions
And all the other plants that feed
These traveling guests
Are too often tagged as weeds
Targeted to be poisoned for profit.
Fashion landscape bigotry:
"My god, see that dandelion in the lawn,
"Kill that neighbor, burn his house."
Where do the children of today
Find magic?
What is left for the birds and frogs
To eat?
God damn you Monsanto/Bayer
And all the other chemical corporations
Whose sprays of death destroy
More than they save,
Leaving us with barren lands
And cancer in our bodies, too.
Say "No" to corporations' dictates and greed
Theirs is not the answer -
Let's bring back the butterflies -
There are other solutions,
And better paths
That do not need
The tools of death
To grow our crops
And protect our lands –
That allow the migrants of the world
To thrive
And ourselves as well.
Carl Scott Harker ©2023
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My latest book of poetry is now available on Amazon, you can find more great poems in here: An Engineer of Words.