The goose on a gold coin in Canada
seems an inversion of the fairy tale
but not of the moral, for the geese live
on, and you know how the tale ends
with a feast of fat and innards.
Now that there’s greed for gas
trapped in rocks, more geese will die.
What is the moral of the story
of the blue methane lakes that elders
of the First Nations surround
with prayer in new-blasted wastelands
as though it will do some good?
Everything is woven together:
the veins in the lungs like a tree,
the glacier with its fingers,
the page like a cloudy sky.
Coastline fractals
repeat forever among
pebbles and fir trees
with salmon DNA.
Who doesn’t understand
how the trees suck up
the water in which the salmon
spawn doesn’t get how strands
of geese fly in, not using
any natural gas, trying to
land in an ice-cold clean
blue lake, to have speckled
eggs splashed with mud.
They spot the sheen and land,
not knowing it’s poison
water bought with the coins
no one should spend.
