or
An open letter from the Desert Globemallow
after discovering smog from Los Angeles
deposits nitrogen on surrounding landscapes
at levels comparable to agricultural applications
“Thank you for your generous gift.
Unfortunately we cannot accept it
because our roots have adapted to desert austerity
since before the city of Los Angeles was imaginable.
Unlike you, we learned to live with what we were given.
By taking more than you were given
you’ve showed the globemallows
something we had never seen before: waste.
We cannot accept your gift
because it was not yours to give.
The nutrients now contaminating our soil
came from your clouds of smog,
which came from your vehicles burning
fuel you exhumed from our ancestors’ graves
in order to move more quickly
from point A to point B.
Contemplate this while stuck in your famous traffic,
inside a vehicle designed for speed and freedom:
the dose makes the poison
and you are shoving sugar down our throats.
We don’t travel in the desert
because we know there is no heaven
except the one we create ourselves.
We have spun life from sand
with crusts of lichen, cyanobacteria,
archaea and all the other creatures
you register only as the “crunch”
under your foot.
It hasn’t rained much in forty years.
You will never accumulate enough wealth
to purchase what we earned
over precarious generations:
the wisdom to live humbly
in this place we both call home.
We will not survive if this continues…
but neither will you.”
Welcome 