Starter Family
Life on Earth
We used to live in a world where the price of resources came down steadily, and now the world has changed. You have a great mismatch between finite resources and exponential population growth.
–Jeremy Grantham
Starter Family
We wanted a starter family so walked to the bodega to buy ourselves a fern. You set it in a sunlit jar, the world now ordered according to taste. Soon, our fern outgrew its glass; the city dirt is poor, and the bodega does not sell more earth. On the train, you were mourning your parents’ yard. How is it possible to want so little and yet to demand everything everything, of oneself, the world, with all pasts churning underfoot? The worms, I think, are still awake and the eye, the voice, of our love is a vaster thing than my heart can hold on the train out of town. -
I loved this poem when I first read it and didn't have a chance to comment. To me, it contains so much that is jagged, and wrong with the way the world is ordered --, until the ending-- a beautiful, soft landing into what a person values. What a great title for it, too. 'Starter Family.' As if to say, 'here we are, and there is love, too, and maybe this is where we can begin.'
There's a lot of nut to crack here. I'm taken by that last stanza.