Foreign Policy In Focus

Hopeless as swatting lies out of the White House
or trying to put out an oil field fire with a cup of water
is this war against the grasshoppers, who,
when I walk through weeds or rattle
the leaves on a pepper plant, leap
by the thousands to remind me
that power isn’t always held by Goliaths
but by the numerous and persistent.
I’ve used up a quart of organic poison
the grasshoppers thrive on, sprayed them
uselessly with the hose, stomped
them into the deck, called them
wicked names they ignore
chewing mercilessly through perennials and broccoli,
sweet basil and jalepenos alike, shredding
even stringy giant white iris leaves
and stripping the raspberry to a single stem.
Monstrous gluttony, relentless destruction.
I suppose I could scream down
hatred from the sky on the idiot leaders
who voted against the Kyoto Accord, plead
with missing rain clouds
or throw up wailing hands and emigrate, but
I was born with that flawed gene
of never giving up.  Try try try
again, as my mother said.  Still
armored grasshopper faces are set
with awful grins of devastation—
those harpies of a vengeful god with his history of boils
and wrath.  What’s left
are ragged tomato plants
excreting their own foul scent
in this long season of wind
and sun, of wild fires and rainless nights,
thinning ozone and locust clouds 
we continue to battle
as we do the plague of rhetoric
devouring the green of our lives.