We Stand Smug

We Stand Smug

We imagine ourselves advanced
And each summer, wage war against bugs
Then stand surprised to find butterflies and bees in serious decline

We consider ourselves wise
Pumping out poisons year after year into our fertile cropland
Ignoring the growing silence of dead birds

We tout ourselves as green
Establishing solar arrays and wind farms
Happy as long as the cobalt and lithium mines and slave labor stays out of sight of our pristine backyards

We think ourselves enlightened
Rewilding huge swaths of land
Then can't figure out why massive forest fires keep happening

We congratulate ourselves for nature conservancy
While Right Whales are murdered by wind farms
And we turn a blind eye to China sucking our oceans dry of fish

We are the caretakers of Earth
We stand smug
While Earth weeps