in response to Mary Oliver

You do have to be good, goddammit.
Your repentance is required,
is long overdue, in fact, and crawling
across oceans of desert would be an appropriate start.
Your animal body has grown soft
by loving what it loves, and it loves
the wrong things. I am weary of hearing
about your despair, and I have the tact not to tell you of mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on, but not forever.
Feel the sun’s searing kiss as it bids you adieu,
as cracked plains and limp leaves wait for rain,
and the new regime of fire extends its rule
across mountains, where later, a dark gravel of rain
will fall with fell abundance and flooding rivers
will wash those mountains down. Meanwhile,
the wild geese, high, hidden in the smoky air,
are heading, out of season, home. And you,
whoever you are, arrogant, selfish, and greedy,
the world, having offered all it could, has changed
beyond your imagining. It does not call to you,
nor do the geese, whose language you cannot speak,
though it sounds harsh, incriminating,
announcing over and over, that you have forfeited your place
in the family of things.