March 8 - Meanwhile

Each piece of data I enter
creates a history of humans
redesigning life, making something
new where what existed before
was unremarkable because
so common as to be agreed upon:
it cannot be any other way.

Meanwhile, the billions sleep
and in our lighted hemisphere
roads are made, exams passed,
abattoirs activated, fruit picked
and stewed, large homes built
without eaves, trees sacrificed
to the gods of Quarry and View.

I spin slowly on my large, deep
office chair, watch the ferns
tickle shade cloth, honeyeater
harvest mosquito and gnat,
dash away again. The cockatoo
tells me news, the wind seeks
my full undivided attention.

Meanwhile, riverbeds recover
from a rude awakening, reduce
the risk of being run amok again
by pottering between the mounds
of debris, uprooted trees, vanquished
beds of reed. Uncommon force
that could not have been any other way.