Eschatology

They say reading is like traveling, you can go
where you want to go & I want to go to the never
ending forest where it’s quiet of people & the trees
are calm & the birds don’t seem to know the logger
sits there, a half mile away, resting for the weekend
& the squirrels are remembering where they hid
their nuts though their caches will be destroyed &
there isn’t a book or a poem that will let me forget
the lakes are drying up in global heat & also, science
is the new religion telling us the world is going to end
in a parched & heinous fashion & the saviors are humans,
collective we, we who install solar & cut carbon emissions &
protect old growth forests & perform eco-travel & support
climate accords while the devil in us rides a gas-guzzling
private jet & our posse ends up on a volcanic island
in the Pacific which sounds a bit like heaven to me
& it’s all mixed up, these narratives, so give me the unchopped
forest, please, & take your log splitter & your feller buncher
& repurpose them for something else.