There Are No Cactuses Here
I am a water lily in an environment made for cacti,
The atmosphere too hot and arid to really let me
thrive,
The soil too shallow and lacking in nutrients,
It is clear I don’t fit in,
But when I look around me to see
Who is constructing this ambience in which only
the driest, most superficial plants can flourish,
I am startled to find myself surrounded
By orchids, roses, lilies, and daffodils,
Many beautiful and unique specimens of existence
that also were not made for this environment
Some can make do better than others,
With a few watering cans and some irrigation,
Some can even get along comfortably,
And yet none of them were truly made for this environment,
And I wonder why, when we have the power to change
the soil,
We do not
I can only think that those who get along well enough
here
Look at those of us who are withering and wilting
and fading away
And see how easily that could be them,
So they fear to change anything
Lest they lose the precarious stability they have
fashioned for themselves
In this environment that is antithetical to their
very existence
They fear to spread the water to their fellow
plants
Lest there not be enough for them in the coming
days,
They fear to let the soil composition change
Because the unknown nature of the new composition
May not benefit them
They fear to spread their leaves wide
To shade the smaller plants from the hammering
sunshine
Lest the heat of the midday sun
Become too much to bear
And yet there are no cactuses here,
So how can they not see
That they, too, are withering and dying and fading
away,
Becoming less of what they are
In an attempt to mimic the plants
For which this environment could possibly be tenable
And that their attempt to save themselves by
killing us
Is also really suicide
Have they forgotten their true nature?
Do they not realize they have the power to change
the environment in which we live?
Because they are not really cactuses—
Prickly and hard and cold and uncaring—
They are really mums and baby’s breath and rhododendrons,
But they had to turn off their compassion,
They had to eliminate their expression,
They had to turn inward and fade
And so now all that we see
Is a world full of uncaring cactuses
In an environment where only cacti can thrive,
When there are no cactuses here.
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