Future Tenses Poem by Doug Stewart

When the wine stops flowing and the avocados
Fail, and the mountains no longer weep,
The wheat slowly curls to the ground where even beetles
Strangle from thirst, and when the songbirds cease to trill and rabbits rot,
Will any still deny changes to our planetary home?

Visions of congressmen swimming to work,
Up Pennsylvania avenue, treading water at stop lights
And pulling fish from their pockets, rocking in the waves
Of the wakes left by the powerboats of the Croesus Lobby.

It will be harder to write, when the wine stops flowing,
Reduced to pencils, paper, and sobriety, we shall soldier on,
Scavenging what we can to feed our inner beast. The moving finger
Writes upon the melted glaciers, but no one looks, no one sees, and time
Blinks.