You Never Get One Thing
This notebook is so old the paper is yellow.
I wonder where the tree grew.
Seems like you never get one thing without losing another.
There's some sort of law about that
to do with finite resources.
Somewhere some guys have figured out to the exact ounce
how much my life has cost the earth,
how many people have died that I might live.
Start with my parents, and theirs, and all who died
because of them. It's like we drip in blood.
Who can wake up then tomorrow morning,
do the tasks set out before them
as if it was their work and their work only?
Who has the courage to look out to the east again
at someone else's sun?
I wonder where the tree grew.
Seems like you never get one thing without losing another.
There's some sort of law about that
to do with finite resources.
Somewhere some guys have figured out to the exact ounce
how much my life has cost the earth,
how many people have died that I might live.
Start with my parents, and theirs, and all who died
because of them. It's like we drip in blood.
Who can wake up then tomorrow morning,
do the tasks set out before them
as if it was their work and their work only?
Who has the courage to look out to the east again
at someone else's sun?
Share this column
Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Greg Kosmicki from It's as Good Here as it Gets Anywhere, Logan House Press, 2016. Poem reprinted by permission of Greg Kosmicki and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.