I have some concerns

about bombs and propaganda,
both of them dropping
around the clock,

about the reckless ancestors we’ve become
to ourselves and our children,

about the rising of fascism
and the dwindling of light-
ning bugs, here in the tall grass that I haven’t
managed to mow. If I do,

butterflies will stir like speckled dust,
the ones that remain. I’ll pull back the levers,
slow the zero-turn beast I finally
learned to wield. The instructions I was given:
steer it like a tank,
hardly illuminating,
as if anyone should ever
know what that means, and yet

how many times now
have I traced a perfect circle,
tight around the trunk
of a punctured and choking ash?