America Doesn't Care

[indar]

I am sweating out a new poem every day for NaPo as well, but Eric, here you are, I can't miss the opportunity that provides so here is one from last year.

 America Doesn't Care

She continues about her business,
rumbles, shifts her plates,
imperceptibly pushes up mountain ranges,
accepts rains that sweep in from across the Pacific,
does not divide sun-passings into time units,
does not acknowledge lines.

America does not remember the vastness
of multi-generational migrations:
black and orange clouds of butterflies
nor skies filled with wild geese
honking companionably in flight
nor stodgy buffalo standing side by side
in native grass across her interior.

In fact, if all that lives should disappear
America won't care, she'll go about her business
tending mountain ranges, flat plains,
alternations of light and dark, droughts and rain,
she won't miss us. 

[TrevorConway]

Hi Linda,

Lots to like about this one. Good overall idea, well-executed, with an interesting tone. And the pace/length feels about right. The only major sticking point for me was that the people appeared suddenly at the end. Could you try adding a new verse (after the first or second verse) which goes about describing what people do (on America's streets/land/etc.)? It wuld put the ending in context then, I think.

Trev

[indar]

Thank you for the read and comments Trevor,

By some miracle I'm caught up with a poem for today and comments on those of others. Sorry it took this long to get back to you. 

I actually felt I implied human presence from the beginning with mention of division of time into units, the thinning of wild animals from skies and grasslands and so forth. The question I raise is--if the actual ground a country we claim to revere stands on doesn't care--who should?