Clocks ticking, street lights changing, factories churning, jack hammers pounding, engines rumbling
Circling highways on the way somewhere
Always demanding more
More electricity, more gasoline, more batteries
To keep it going
Everyday
Everywhere
And we keep hauling oil across oceans
Boring into the earth to find more fuel
To feed the machine we have built
It seems as though we have become the machine
Driving our cars
To air-conditioned office buildings
Computers and phones constantly connected to our brains
Each person a cog in the wheel
I struggle to see beyond this machine
To imagine
How burning a corn field in Iowa is different
Than clearing rainforests thousands of miles away
To remember what I once learned about the biodiversity of species
How losing bees threatens cross-pollination
And the survival of food
I try to understand how my actions affect the big picture
How my garbage does not end in my trash can
but sometimes as far away as Ethiopia
My children’s plastic toys filling the bellies of humpback whales along the way
Discarded electronics falling into the hands of children in a junkyard in China
Seeking out nuggets of mercury for resale.
But the truth is close to home
I’m not a machine
I can do things the ipad cannot
I can turn it off
And develop my non-machineness
I can read
Old yellowed pages
That sit still in a vast sinking library
A sleeping dinosaur nearly abandoned, on the campus nearby
With more time on my hands, I can notice things
Hummingbirds buzzing around flowers
The morning star and fading moon
And I can comprehend
What I was too busy to see
So lace up your boots
Stake your shovel into the earth
And watch the seeds grow
Author Bio:
Angel Sands Gunn is a writer and mother living in Charlottesville, VA. She recently published a story called UNDERWATER on Literary Mama and writes for EDIBLE BLUE RIDGE MAGAZINE. She has been accepted to the Appalachian Writers Workshop this summer where she will workshop her new novel about a West Virginia family during the Great Depression.
Circling highways on the way somewhere
Always demanding more
More electricity, more gasoline, more batteries
To keep it going
Everyday
Everywhere
And we keep hauling oil across oceans
Boring into the earth to find more fuel
To feed the machine we have built
It seems as though we have become the machine
Driving our cars
To air-conditioned office buildings
Computers and phones constantly connected to our brains
Each person a cog in the wheel
I struggle to see beyond this machine
To imagine
How burning a corn field in Iowa is different
Than clearing rainforests thousands of miles away
To remember what I once learned about the biodiversity of species
How losing bees threatens cross-pollination
And the survival of food
I try to understand how my actions affect the big picture
How my garbage does not end in my trash can
but sometimes as far away as Ethiopia
My children’s plastic toys filling the bellies of humpback whales along the way
Discarded electronics falling into the hands of children in a junkyard in China
Seeking out nuggets of mercury for resale.
But the truth is close to home
I’m not a machine
I can do things the ipad cannot
I can turn it off
And develop my non-machineness
I can read
Old yellowed pages
That sit still in a vast sinking library
A sleeping dinosaur nearly abandoned, on the campus nearby
With more time on my hands, I can notice things
Hummingbirds buzzing around flowers
The morning star and fading moon
And I can comprehend
What I was too busy to see
So lace up your boots
Stake your shovel into the earth
And watch the seeds grow
Author Bio:
Angel Sands Gunn is a writer and mother living in Charlottesville, VA. She recently published a story called UNDERWATER on Literary Mama and writes for EDIBLE BLUE RIDGE MAGAZINE. She has been accepted to the Appalachian Writers Workshop this summer where she will workshop her new novel about a West Virginia family during the Great Depression.
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