"My Green Shoes"
My green shoes
are actually mostly white.
The sort of white
you get when
you stir up
a can of cream paint.
Or kind of like the sand
on an ancient beach.
My conservative friend told me
they're the color of baby spew.
I like that,
they're organic after all.
Each green shoe
has more milage than I do.
They travelled from California
to Michigan. But even before.
The soles are made from old tires,
that shot up and down highways
all around the coast.
Now they lead me down
trails watched by 100 year old trees
and streets overtowered with 100 year old buildings
made of mud and timber even older than that.
My shoes are natural.
No, they don't grow on trees,
but they are cultivated in fields.
My shoes' stalks were brown and green
at times, and they showed tiny blossoms,
rather fragrant, little white petals
that were landing pads for bees.
They sucked up the radiation
in the sky, and turned it into footwear.
I paid fifteen dollars for them.
All in all,
I'm quite comfortable
in my shoes.
~ Larry Butz
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"Wind Farm on Lake Michigan"
The tenor of the cranes, erect within the lake
I could have heard eons ago
and I can hear this moment too.
The difference lies in repetitive clang against,
as she swoops and hops to and fro,
the honk of a clarinet's split reed.
I could have seen the ivory white tusks
poking out of a solid base, similar albedo
except steel versus glacier. Watch each one feed!
The same exact food from the same exact time.
black molasses, building muscle or infrastructure,
slurped from the earth, relatives of today's abelmosks and mollusks.
It seems fitting to deem it phantasime
by either sense of the word. It will kill the drake
and the trout. It means our environmental impact will be condensed.
Atop of Michigan, less need for oil, less ocean floors to rupture.
~ Larry Butz
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