Deepwater Oil.

• Position: Poem

It's a morning so green in Virginia you feel like you could walk and just keep walking, fling yourself out on the spine of the world, trusting in the goodness of leaves and desire. Cows tear the sweet blades, the ancient sound of ruminants, the reliable pushing up of grass. One black calf raises her head, her forehead marked with a star. Even the flies clustered on the cow pies jewel the world. This is where I am as the BP oil well floods the sea, pumping like a severed jugular. Who wouldn't rather think about the ruins of the human dynasty than the billions of microscopic blue crabs hatched in the shoals of the gulf. The transparent plankton burning from within as sun heats the oil. The foul water pumping through the bodies of sea stars, siphoned into the oyster's flesh. How to sit at breakfast and delicately saw apart the sections of grapefruit? How can anyone absorb the magnitude of our failures? My ex-husband used to try. He'd...