A sun drenched Wednesday

Sun drenched Wednesday afternoon
Parked in shade and watching my daughter sleep
She is exhausted, tired out from chasing waves
And watching the little crabs with their pinchy hands
In the tiny temporary stillness of tide pools 
And in all my years I have never loved as fiercely
As I love this tiny utterly fearless person
like any father worth the name
I would give my world to improve hers
Without question
Without hesitation
And pay any cost to safeguard her future
And yet I sit here, impotent in the sure knowledge
that she will grow up in a world
without the monarch butterfly migration
that used to float like clouds over California
where the kelp forests are gone
tidepools, nearly empty
the teaming life I saw in this place not so long ago
now only a memory
And if I don’t teach her of what she has lost
she will think it is normal
unable to ever know the beauty that is gone
Watching her dream my heart shatters
 into a million obsidian shards
Sharp enough to open the veins of men who would sell her future
Men who love nothing beyond themselves
And fill skies with smoke and oceans with plastic
So that even tiny crabs with pinchy hands 
Who live their lives in the shelter of tidepools
Cannot hope to escape
Men who would steal my little one’s future 
For the sake of adding zeros to bank accounts
That already contain more wealth
Than ten generations could hope to spend
In a world that may not survive one more
And I, who have spent most of my life 
Raging against such men
Endless protests and actions
Risking everything I have and am
and receiving only empty promises in return
I could rip their flesh from their bodies with my teeth
Grind their bones to fertilize my garden
And never feel a moment’s guilt
If it would reverse the damage they have done
And protect her innocence a little longer
But there is no blade sharp enough
To cut them from her world without scars
So I start the car, and drive slowly home
Careful of the turns in the road
So as not to disturb her dreams