ENVIRONMENTAL Poem: You live your life, by Gloria Nixon-John

by the changing light
the sway of blousy pines
all the patent beauty
that abounds, the seasons’
adornments cum destruction.

Then a spider, carnival red
nearly too small to see alights
on the lip of a white rose And
in all your years, you have never
seen a spider so rare so red.

Yet it has come your way
urging you to see the small
and smaller yet, to reminisce
Whitman’s blades of grass
beside the plebian slip of stone.

Now fanatic, frantic for all
once unseen down on hands
and knees a knowing beast
then up and up— a wingless toil
into the waiting tree.

All to praise the infinitesimal
you once so easily failed to see.