So show your son a sunset
before they’re all gone
advised an old Lefty
exhibiting the usual paranoia
of the Left
that has now spilled over
on ecologists
and others of their ilk
always ranting about the ozone hole
and cancer and smoking
and the population of the world
doubling again
by the year two thousand twenty
and about how the earth
is coming to a sudden bad end

Whereas we all know the media and
the oil combines and
the tobacco companies and
the industry scientists and
the industrial perplex in general
are all telling us the whole bull
and nothing but the bull
So no need to worry
No problem”
as they say downtown
Even if those clouds out the window
look a bit strange
And the droughts all over the world
aren’t really all that bad
because it can’t happen here
as they used to say in the Thirties
And all those jet streams from airlines
really don’t spew more
cancerous exhaust
than a billion cars

And those aren’t really
Sun Dogs in the too-brilliant sun
And sunsets are still sunsets
even if they are only
one-color sunsets
over which pilots are reporting
clouds are lower than they used to be
before the Greenhouse years
Whereas sunsets now are more like “heart events”
with pollution like bad cholesterol
jamming the arteries of the universe
and obstructing circulation
and causing systemic disasters

And our evening spread across the sky
like a patient passed out upon a table

Lawrence Ferlinghetti