Going fast, what a blast, losing
our relationship with Earth seemed
such an innocent gas.
We burn her, Mother Nature already
on fire— “why not us,” you ask.
Given five senses, with an occasional sixth
that writes poems and other stuff:
We feel so few inside a speeding car,
you think you are doing so much—traveling
so far, but have really shut off your life
to the smells, sights, sounds and other feelings
of feet on ground, walking to and from
naked with truth—muscles at work, the body
moving, sweating fully alive.
But you would rather lock yourself in a
loud metal box and drive.
Concrete, metal and asphalt covering
Earth as you burn her, speeding past
experience, people to help, people to meet,
animals and attractions only available to
the feet.
Vroom, vroom, “I haven’t room room, for
this slowed down experience you write in your
poems, I gotta go!!!”
There is no better place than Heaven, taking steps
God gave us on the straight and narrow, those
on the path rooting for and welcoming those
on the scary Wide—
We cannot get there tense and flipping off
your neighbors as you drive.
Re-think cars, burning earth, being so loud the
crickets wanna die, Native American culture
squashed, first cultures and their ways of life—
Aborigines, Celts, tribal unity and Earth-led prayer
together with oneness and purity.
We love our Bible and Tao Te Ching, we love even
excuses that make us happy to turn the key on
our bright red metal thing—there it is so large
and loud in our concrete drive.
Ask if it pleases God, then decide a day that
puts you in touch with all Creation.
Locked in, locked away streaming by loudly
at high speeds, we miss too much, litter the
narrow path to heaven even while we clutch—
Let it go. Walk. And join me as I throw some trash
away. Let us not defile ourselves with what we say
or do.
Give up some driving days, be more quiet,
and hear from God direct what it is we need to
be content in the land, clean it up—
Make everything fresh and new.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 