Fuji, Rainier, now to Africa’s pinnacle
she followed, behind a parade of sycophants  
marching, single file behind his greatness  

few made ascents with him  
she only Fuji, on a windless day  
though others made the trek up Rainer,
surviving a blizzard that hit halfway
down  

she told her lover
his faithful must have thought his presence
imbued them with immortality  
which he seemed to possess    

maybe it did, the lover said  
seven decades and one, still *******
old mountains and young women  
and she was still there, despite
the doctors’ bleak sentence    

she was painting, moving
while she still could, a water color
of Rainier in mist, hanging in some
haunted hall in his home

now a pale pastel of Kilimanjaro
for which he would spend a fortune, to hang  
somewhere he would not spend a minute    

when her extended contract expired  
she would be ashes scattered in Big Sur  
and he would still be climbing higher  
breathing heaven’s ether, a color
she never captured  

but her signature
would be on overpriced art  
which from the start, he commissioned
to keep her from leaving without
having seen rarefied air

will I hear a fly buzz
when I…?
will my hands
be too weak to…?
once
thunderous pink anvils,
house builders
unholy home wreckers
woeful word weavers
plan writers…
now
crossed,
helpless and flaccid
hiding under hospice wool
shame covered by a thin green veil
on my antique grey chest
crossed,
my heart-beating
faintly
my eyes
scanning,
slowly
catching lonely light
missing even the fly
who is now
in another room
another world
buzzing in another’s ear

a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service

where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods

this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho

he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day

when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived

they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC

who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck

that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed

when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ******* duty

fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well






.

from her window she could see
the shells of buildings the bombs battered--gray concrete
ghosts, haunting in their silence

Father said his ears
hadn't stopped ringing since the attacks, though he still
could hear her playing

and he expected her practice to continue
for one day, he promised, prayers would prevail, peace
would return, and her song would be heard

play, he entreated, for ivory, black
and white, has forgotten the evil of men, their carnage;
the notes know nothing except to be played

and to give pause for hope, when
more trenchant sounds demanded one’s attention,
still the song must remain

it is...
amazing,
how easy it is to ****
with the tinny tools of modernity
2 birds 1 shot,
of bird shot
who would have thought,
before thought,
we could create such things
to help us destroy?
in our gut,
in the deep slime
of our bellies, and our pasts
something feels right
something feels whole
when we commit
the act
something drives us
to repeat
the act
of ******
as often
as the act of creation
is this the delicate balance?  
the intricate scales
tipping so slightly
towards one world or the other?
it does not seem “delicate”
when precious flesh
is ripped from bone
by angry claws and teeth
when that which flew
in the heavens
we could only dream were there
lies naked and defiled
on the sullied soil
was it always this easy to reverse the fates?  
was it this easy
when we trod the plains for days
in pursuit of the hairy beasts
when our feral feasts
were by the first fires
and our hands bloodied
and our chins dripping
with the marrow of the fallen?  
was it always this easy?
it matters not
to the 2 birds
killed with 1 shot

will I put lipstick on you  
when you lay still and silent
as the last morning
  
or will you pull the sheet
over my face gently  
with a surprised sense of relief  
when my final breath
marries the gray air
  
will it be in the room
where we slept
under the watchful eye
of children and grandchildren
their timeless images nailed to the walls  
ever present but mute
while they navigated worlds  
with horizons we would never see

or would it be in the
hallowed house of hospice
where palliative words like
“we will miss you”
“not long now,”
“you can go, it’s OK,”
float above the beds  
like birds stalled in flight  
riding unseen currents, but
soon to swoop down
to perch on mystic memories,
briefly,
before flying into
the karmic night

mass ******, ****** masses
of other inferior classes
the tempest does this to beatific butterflies
locusts do this to the fecund fields
we do it to fair game and fowl
but we evince a primal howl
when it is done to our own
somehow surmising we hold the throne
and are of such lofty creation
we can engage in desecration/decimation
of a trillion voiceless vines
and all else within the confines
of the kingdom of lesser beasts
fodder for our feral feasts
were the “chosen” not fodder for…
Reltiha?

once a collage
hung on a wide white wall  
with monochrome photos of  
all creatures great and small  

Dali juxtaposed with Doris Day,
LBJ atop JFK, and Joe DiMaggio,
grinning Frankenstein and frowning
Frank Sinatra, not far below

Hemingway, Groucho Marx, Marlon Brando  
occupying three of four corners, the bottom right
a curious cat, in stretched repose

dead center, a cracked crucifix
and four Beatles all, Paul the biggest
with the cross crowning his frame    

a Corvette,
and Stalin in his tomb  
were also given ample room,
on this black and white piece of art  
as were *******, with cap,
Jimi Hendrix with axe  

another three score
and a couple more, completed
this cacophony of sight, but absent
were J. Bieber, Beyonce, any of the Simpsons
of Fox fame, revealing the artist of this gray masterpiece  
was blissfully blind to cyber sacrilege,
Steve Job’s toys, and the lost soul
of Lindsey Lohan

struck by lightning twice by twenty-four
this astronomical record was hers, Guinness proclaimed,
this lady so famed, top of her class at Stanford, then Yale Med,
and blissfully wed, to a surgeon who always came in second

this did not matter at Cabo, or even in their first condo  
but as her curriculum vitae grew faster than a Walmart receipt
on Black Friday, he scrubbed up for one bloodletting after another, removing appendixes, and appendages, feeling her shadow
grow heavy, even in the bright lights
of his operating theater

his first was, of course, a nurse, though at least her age
his second, a decade newer model, fixed his lattes at Starbucks
number three was the neighbor with whom they shared
nothing but a fence, and a few awkward stares

her hours in the lab with petri dishes grew, and  
she never let on she knew, that her clean shaven number two  
was lying with others to stand himself  

when he asked for a divorce--number four requiring more
than liquid exchanges in sweet hotel suites--she acquiesced and even let him have the Welsh Corgi, the cabin in Aspen,
and half the 401K

to this day, she recalls imagining his liaisons  
while she married menacing molecules to one another
in tubes under faithful light, seeking answers to questions
asked by the dying she would never meet
a lump would only grow in her throat    
if she thought his scalpel never sliced
the heart of number four, for five

the boy enters when he knows
others will not be there
in prayer--their silent entreaties
to a god he is not sure
listens or cares

morning after mass is best;
the bouquets are fresh
he can smell them once
the scent of the early
worshipers fades:

the pipe smoke from the old man's
coat
the widow's perfume which lingers longer than the ammonia stench
of the holy homeless who is there
every day

Christ watches over this:
a white marble man bolted
to a cross, witnessing
this spectacle for millennia

long before this cold statue
was placed in this cathedral,
he was there, the slaughtered lamb
cursed to die again and again

that is how the boy sees it;
not a promised life eternal,
but the same death anon,
anon

the pounding of the stakes,
the blood offering: the old man, the woman, the mendicant
all crucifying him again with
each plaintive prayer

once their odors fade,
the funeral sprays, the bouquets
remain--cut, dying flowers,
a fragrant impermanence
with no expectation for life
beyond their time in the
vase--no imploring a godhead
for forgiveness

no demand for blood
and perpetual death

only a little water for their brief journey
in fragile glass

clearly, we are dead
the white noise
painting our eardrums
creates no pictures
the light show in front of us
doesn’t ask our eyes any more questions
no obit is written
no grave dug
ashes are strewn
across a lake of fire, but
they are not really ours
only remnants of some genesis
we never saw--it gave us
a flash of light
that lasted a few billion years
letting us groan and grow
yawn and yearn
for forever and more
of that which never really was
clearly we are dead

who taught children,
asked for nothing,
and died last night

proud buck
frozen, close
heart in my
cross hairs

I squeeze
the trigger.
nothing
happens

except birdsong

as if
they know
some doe was saved
from widowhood

by a
mystic
misfire

I saw him,
under
halogen haze
never days
a child I thought
no, a man,
tiny, with
a quick gait
trying
to outrun
fate
or an imagined
pit bull
always,
a white
football helmet
he wore
always,
he waved,
but always
he was mute
once,
I was
close enough
to see his face,
a smile
behind which lay
a secret
no modern
alchemy could
make him forget
a code
no white coat God
could decipher
a Mona Lisa smile
when I was expecting
a Munch scream
why the helmet
from what
was he fearing
assault--the asphalt?
stones cast from
the heavens
he saw only
under cover
of night?
I heard his mother died;
then he disappeared
perhaps she yet
laced his shoes
before his nocturnal
sojourns
and strapped
the helmet on
his head
I look for
him, and
other night
walkers, though
his once upon
a time is
memory

the car seemed to be gliding on glass
the last inconvenient instant before impudent impact  
the mangled mass of metal and his black crisp body
a spectacle for the masses, all 4 of them  
2 volunteer fire fighters and 2 EMTs
later, his father, blind now in one eye
from America’s diabetes, had Ramona  
drive him to the spot, to the dead oak
as big around as an oil barrel  
dead long before Paul’s 1996 Ford Escort
decided to take a go at it  
daddy had to see the place  
that infinite space between  
yesterday and the tomorrow
that would never come, even though
he had already seen, through his one good eye
his boy’s charred carcass at the county morgue  
resting on a silver slab, the clean and cold bed  
where he would spend his last night
before the fiery furnace,
Ramona and he could keep his ashes
no need for a big service, no money for one either  
but Dub, “Paul's boss down to the auto parts store,”  
opened his wallet as wide as it would go
for the cremation and a nice urn  
Paul would be missed, by Daddy and Dub  
and once in a great while, in the fast and furious world
of the flat gray town where he lived and died  
someone would ask, whatever happened to
that old boy at the auto parts store  
the one who limped a bit as he walked,
the one who rarely talked but always
smiled through his yellow teeth
when he placed the goods carefully
on the counter

always in the fog, the klaxon sounded,
announcing another round of shelling

Tuck was terrified, for he
thought this was a hound
from hell, and it was

telling London to head
to the underworld--dank cellars
or shelters built for survival,
or mass burial

depending on where Gerry's
bombs decided to land

the lasses knew well the drill:
grab their favorite doll and say a
prayer,
             going
                        down
                                   the
                                         stairs

Mum would grab Tuck--his shivering body
not soothed by her warm embrace

for when the hounds stopped their menacing moan
deeper doomed demons would begin their call;
the beast sensed this, and he had no god
to beg for salvation

he could only feel the rumbling of the ground
and not close his ears to the sound, which riveted
stakes through his bones

from the sizzling southwestern sun
we stepped into the beer stenched shadows
of the Blue Agave Lounge
left lizards in the street but there were plenty inside
lurking in dark corners, their bodies draped like the dead
faces in pools of beer on ancient formica

we were killin' time
and brain cells
and any lingering ambitions
that lurked in our dark corners

on the wall behind the bar
was a "Felix Garcia" original
some desert artist
who doubtless killed some of his own time
in the blue shadows
of the Agave

the painting, unblemished by the dying around it
was of a schooner
white masts full in blue skies
rolling on purple waves
headed to some blind horizon
far from the Blue Agave

drunken eyes digested this
and perchance wondered
if it reached some blissful port
or took men to a deeper doom

if we could only ask Felix
but he is not to be found
and he may not know
for in the Blue Agave
hidden from the light of day
dreams are drenched in darkness
and tomorrow is a land the lizards fight to forget

my pasture will be paid for
courtesy of the Veterans Administration  
grass above my bones will be under “perpetual care”
cropped square, green and never allowed to be with ****  
much the same as it was with me, when I was ten and eight
and taught to hasten others to their own plots  

I fear some of them became feast for maggots
or the wild dogs’ jaws, deprived of a bugle’s clarion call  
a politely folded banner, or serenely composed, lugubrious pall
their eyes were not closed gently, with a loved one by their side  
the night came to them amidst man made thunder,
fire from the perverse steel  

in eventide’s charcoal stillness  
where I await my inevitable “agricultural” fate  
their faces appear on the ceiling, faintly,
waiting for my company, not asking
why I am not yet among them, not knowing
the mutual mad marching of our feet has been replaced
by something called years, or that their humble silence  
has left me with yet greater eternal fears

food stamps on my table
a perverse end to this fable
that began with kidnapping,
cotton fields and the whip

that summer, Born to Be Wild
and Mrs. Robinson were on AM,
A & W Drive Inns served frosted mugs    
and Tet’s blood had not long dried black
on Saigon streets

my thumb took me from the green tipped tongue
of western Kentucky across the wide world
to a café in Santa Rosa, where I spent my last
eighty-five cents, on a tuna sandwich
and chips

a bus bench was waiting for me  
when the cafe closed its doors
at 12:10, the old waitress giving me
a generous extra dime of time,
knowing I had to face the night  
and the bench, or the New Mexico road
I chose the latter and headed south  
under coal dark skies    

only eighteen wheelers passed, their screaming lights
robbing me of what quiet vision night’s monotony had granted  
they saw my thumb, but not one stopped; they did not know I had walked
a dozen dark dead miles, and had not closed my eyes in 60 hours  
nor did they care, about me, or my shadow on Highway 54  

I talked to pinyons,  cedars that dotted the mesas
and moved about like mournful buffalo, stirred to life
by a sound or a scent, perhaps my own foul road bouquet,
though they were mute, even when I asked them
if I was seeing god in their measured marching
across my desert dream  

long before
the dawn I begged to come
I saw him, dead center on my highway
so black he was blue, his eyes like two emeralds
hanging in some ethereal space, staring at me, the rest
of the absent world unaware he was there, growling
the rumble so low I tasted it, as he might taste me,
I felt our nostrils flair, as his would when
he devoured me,  I saw the blood feast
through our eyes, the last morsel of me,
a pale art form on an asphalt palette  

as he swallowed the last of his meal
the eighteen wheeler came, its high beams bouncing off him
only long enough for me to see his mouth was dry
and his belly empty, before he vanished
into the blue night

you invited us
to life’s one act play
where the bearded lady shouts to me
in her mocking spotlights
I don’t stay to listen
to what might be the truth
long ago I hid from that,
(burning bibles talking, and
prison doors locking)
yes, I fled
through the tempting doors
not yet barred
to write riddles
far from her shining stage
outside, in the cold stillness
alone
where the owl plays some game in the night
and hoots its signal of our plight

he tells me dark secrets  
and paints colors on the shore
where the salt mist speaks to him
in voices heard no more  

along he wades, watching
the growing ground at his feet
careful to not crush creatures in the surf  
***** crawling to bed themselves
in their own tugging time
before the moon full tides  

slowly, he walks
as if one long step
might fling him into the abyss  
he does not fear the fall,  
he knows, it comes to all,
fishmongers and kings  
falcons with their mighty wings  
all share the descent, as the sea
turns from blue to black    

while I hide far inland
he paints me dark secrets
vanishing tracks in the sand,
and I long to hear his brush strokes,
to see what vast weary waves reveal,
through his teary eyes

a thousand miles we traveled to see
your jack-hammered giants--we arrived at dusk
just as the torrents began, bathing your
chiseled countenances

we hid in our chariot of modernity
wipers flapping in syncopated time, Bluetooth belching
out words from kin, "have a good time,"
"sorry for the storm..."  

but I wasn't, for lightning struck
a blackjack pine, and four mammoth men
came to life, their sheen now electric, their long
mute voices once again a resounding roar

little remains
of my grandfather's house:
raw rafters, warped planks with hints
my uncle invested in paint

the windows all gone, time
and twisters took them, and much
of the roof--what is left of that sags,
a silent submission to gravity

a woodstove survives, cold
to the touch, with no memory
of the fire it once birthed, the precious
prairie timber which fed it

now it knows only mourning
doves' song; winged squatters
unperturbed by my presence, as if
they know I lay no claim to now

the old boards have stories
I will never hear: the birth of babes,
reading the Word by kerosene lamps,
the last breaths of men

the songbirds may know,
but they woo the living in flight--a
future of nesting and fertile eggs; they
owe no belated dirge to long lost kin

he sat bedside with his great grandmother
stroking a hand laced with what he saw as
tiny blue rivers, flowing from a thin wrist
dammed by ancient knuckles

boulders chiseled by eighty-four years

he read from his book while Mommy
dozed in the chair, and nurses squeaked
in and out, all with half smiles he could
not decipher, for Grammy was sick

and when his mother was awake, she cried

he hadn't seen her tears before;
he tried not to look, preferring his book
with its pictures of the sun, orbiting
planets and mazy moons

and spaces in between where heaven might hide

he understood most of its words,
and none were of heavens--unless noxious gasses
and swirling clouds of dust were the winds which
whipped through the pearly gates

but his seven wise years knew that was not so

when he turned to the page of the
penultimate planet from the sun,YOU-ruh-nuss
he discovered it took four score and four years
to orbit our star once

math's mystery may have eluded him

though coincidence was not yet
in his lexicon, and now he knew Grammy
had her times around the sun, her eighty four
equaling one for the great tilting Uranus

anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush

they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters

they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time

one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music

she penned a note
in girly curling cursive,
blue on white lined paper,
taped it to his carrier, a cage
one size too small

"he bit me, crapped on my floor,
made thousand anxious scratches
on  my door"

she didn't intend to report his heinous
crimes in rhyme, but she did; they were enough to get him the needle, ministered mercifully, of course

though cursive's now a dying art,
it's sufficient to sign another death
decree--for slaughter, we know,
can be accomplished
with any font

and you ain't gotta dig too deep
to find it

it's right behind your eyes, in that picture
you see

of Mama runnin' half naked from the house covered
in blood and snot

and crack crazed daddy chasing after her
with a butcher knife

before the man come and gunned
him down

it's there in that lump throat memory of grandad telling you his own Papa got the whip

for standing tall against a bulldog
Alabama sheriff

hell is being sent to Granny
for foster care

and her telling you she ain't got enough
food for herself

it's wearing shoes so tight
every step is a jab

a reminder everything you do
is gonna come with pain

what Hell ain't is what that fat pastor
claims it to be

some fiery place I can't even
see

buried so far down I can't feel
its infernal heat

hell, hell is right here on my black
and blood painted street

you were born in Denver
during a white out blizzard

like all round babes,
you had no clue, what was in store for you
you couldn't have known...

you would be
the last nickel to ***** through
a five-cent coin phone box,
in El Paso, Texas

or that you would sleep
for a year in a piggy bank,
of a boy named Felipe, who would die
of white blood cancer, before
he could spend you

and who would have thought
you would be in the linty pocket
of a serial murderer named Ray, when
he was captured in Santa Fe, a sunny day
on the ancient square, stalking
his next victim

a jailer used you that very night
with a twin of yours he found in
another picked pocket, of a drunk drifter,
to buy a Hershey's bar, from a machine
that would have taken a dime as well

your face began to show the fingered
signs of age by the time the choppers found sky  
above the Saigon Embassy, where you had spent
an aching April night in the Ambassador's pants

when you turned a half century, you were tossed
into a gallon jug, e pluribus unum, no more special
than others a third your vintage

I finally met you today, only because chance landed you on
the top of the heap, waiting to be saved from further folly

hunched over, a brown-skinned army,
picking, the field soon to be stripped of its bounty;
they will move to the next one, fast,
before the fruit falls to the ground

"los ninos, los viejos tambien"
the young, the old ones also help, though
they are slower and tote less a load  

when the day is done, they build fires
for the frijoles, and to keep the night's spirits
at bay; they sleep in the shanties, the sheds
the master provides  

the next day will be the same, though maybe
not as hot--maybe a rain will give them respite
from their labors  

a gentle, short shower they pray,
for a storm might lay ruin to the crops, the treasure
they borrow only long enough
to basket and truck

not even a cloud visits the white sky
so the stooping, the loading drags on without relief
but from the north, a cool wind does blow

in it they hear a voice without cords vibrating,
yet one that speaks a language their hearts know well,
telling them their toil is to be brief, yet eternal: that winter
only whispers now, but soon commands all to rest

called, "when I am dead"

and what came to mind, while
pecking away

were thatched roof cottages, hedgerows
all along a cliff,

and waves below whipping against
earth's spine

farther out were great swells
and black ships foundering

sea serpents were darting through
the green depths

this spectacle was silent, the screaming
men, the crashing waves

even the charcoal sky, threaded with a
thousand bolts of lightning

birthed no thunder, though I didn't
wonder why

I was supposed to among the dead
where vibrations abound

though none pound against
eardrums

such silence, I was told, was tantamount
to solace

but men were drowning, and fires leapt
across the waters

and no passage led up the cliffs to home
and sanctuary from this terrific tempest

I do not know why you moved to this side  
long ago, before your city became a **** zone  
maybe you knew something I did not  
you knew many things I did not, which I discovered
when you politely corrected my grammar  
though it was my native tongue,
and one you learned reading our newspapers,
watching our television
listening, more carefully than most,
to what the gringos said  
you told me tales of the arena,
usually after dinner, on your back porch  
when the shadow of the mountain covered our houses
like a quiet blanket, blocking out the blistering heat
of the desert day  
you would offer me a soda, always  
before my questions began  
your civility was strange to me at first,
the adults in my family barked and cackled  
your words rolled out like sweet liquid  
and left me wanting more  
I never asked why you had no woman,
you were as handsome as any man I knew  
later, years later, years of name calling later
I guess I understood,  maybe
that was why you left your home  
though the blind blood of bigotry
ran freely on both sides of the Rio Grande
and I knew you to be courageous
for when you told me the stories,
as the desert sky became violet and cool,  
and the few cicadas began their song,  
you boasted not of your dangerous dance
in the packed dirt of the ring,
but of the art it took to silence the beast  
the lost look in its red *** eyes
and the silent sadness you felt  
as the crowd cheered
another beautiful death

yesterday,
our
calibrated
counting
made
your gruesome
death
an…
anniversary

white caps, near her shore
nothing more--those and voices
in the breaking waves

she alone hears,
as code deciphered,
their scribe, she is

faithful to the crashing
rhythm, in which she reads
the dance of the dead  

countless fishes' swishes,  
harpooned whales’ wailing, myriad men
mourning, as vessels foundered

white caps, waves, sand
symphony she alone hears, sees, smells
and understands as dirge

fishing the river is for old men,
solitary figures who saw their original sin
and now see darkness closing in
fishing is for old men, who can stand to watch
the leaves pass them by on the soft singing waters
and not wonder where they go, for they know,
it matters not if they make it to the black sea,
tarry a while on a quiet bank, or sink into the silt
fishing is for old men, who dream while awake
whose eyes no longer flutter but squint
in the sun’s naked white journey from shore to shore
when their line becomes taut, they know
now a slow dance, a chat will ensue, not a battle
they once felt compelled to fight, part of the larger war,
raging, raging against the night, for the fish…or
the fisherman, knows when the conversation ends
his line will again be loose, drifting on the currents
bound for the certainty of uncertainty
fishing is for old men
I am haunted by waters

(Old Lyrics referring to those heard from "vinyl" albums of the 1960s)

from dusty cardboard covers
and winged time that flew by
oh poetic ponderous parchment
you have become my sacrament
my sense and soul, my mind’s eye

my grandchild cries in the background
faux fighting to stay awake
while I sit in monitored light
distracted by her playful plight
penning lines for others to partake

some have scripture and prayer
to make their journey into the divine
I plunk rhapsodic rhyme on an electric page
inspired by what I read in a golden age
now seen by me in tragic decline

so I whisper words of the mystical muse
and let them be my guiding light
and weave me through this tangled dream
like some moonbeam on a trickling stream
flowing into my deepening night

near the surface,
just beneath the sounds of our feet
among the bones, are arrowheads
maybe a spent cartridge from the bluecoats
who brought a strange thunder,
disturbing the a cappella birdsong,
deeper
hidden in eons of darkness, unperturbed,
until now, by the shallow, scratching efforts
of the creatures above,  
a black organic soup, remnants of plants
and animals who once breathed  
like we, we who now voraciously drill
through the tired but tenacious skin  
to reach a rich marrow, one we resurrect
to blaspheme in our mobile ovens
and scatter ashes
on a deaf and dying rock  

Post Script:
The earth never forgets.
Whatever we do to ****** it is recorded, often in ways undecipherable to man, but etched  permanently somehow, somewhere.
Does the earth seek revenge?
Or is it retribution, or a reckoning?
Anything that has the power to recall every act in infinite detail and in perpetuity has the potential to respond.
Maybe a propensity to respond?  
Is the earth an angry god?
I do not know, but
the earth never forgets.

the shelters were full
surely that is why I found her
in the alley

she was as old and white as time...
probably three score, at most, though curled up
like a babe in the womb

her eyes were yet open:
what had she seen last, what had
her last supper been?

and where were the disciples
with bread and wine, with body and blood
while she froze on the hard earth?