BREAKING NEWS: GOD’S REWILDING PLAN LEAKED

According to a source high up and anonymous,
God will announce this week He’s rewilding the earth.
He confesses He should have rested on day six
while He was on a cosmic roll, and laments
He missed the signs: Bipeds, blinkered
by supremacy, would try to tame every thing.

He admits to verte- and invertebrates
His human trial flopped. Therefore, next Sunday
peacocks, pandas, and silver backs will play
in Times Square and caravans of antelope race
down Pennsylvania Avenue. Every boundary line,
dam, trellis, and mended wall will rumble down.
Steel, asphalt, and concrete will be banished heretofore.
So will summerizing gardens everywhere.

Believe what you like about our superiority,
God made a mistake. He should have advised
Adam and Eve not to procreate and lounged them
beneath the apple tree. They would have spent
their ten-score years in blissful innocence
rather than sweat through parental anxiety.

Between you and me, I’d support a God
as transparent as this. If His plan succeeds,
find me hanging out – waggishly naked
and wild – on the edge of some post-paradise
with monkeys, giraffes, dolphins,
elephants, koalas, and birds of every size.

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey through California to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout North America and the UK, and her fourth collection, A Penchant for Masquerades, was released by Unsolicited Press in 2019. She is currently the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation. Find out more about Carolyn at www.carolynmartinpoet.com.