"Mother Nature’s on the Run" by John C. Mannone

Mother Nature’s on the Run

         After Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush”

I never thought the Sun,

an orb of gold

light,

          could flare

all the way through cold

space ninety-three million miles

          and singe

our souls in the time of apocalypse.

We were too busy

                              making our own fire

bombs, blasting everything we knew.

          This good earth, stained with blood.

It must have been when the rocks cried

        that the Moon yelled

               at the Sun.

It must have been soon after that—

the gold Sun rushed its fire-light.

Only a few of us escaped

                              the tsunami

fireballing at a million miles an hour,

our silver spaceships glinting

          in the hot star

light.

Mother Nature’s on the run, we’re flying

to a new home in the stars

        but nothing’s new, no nothing’s new

under any sun.

--John C. Mannone

Poet’s Notes:  While listening to Neil Young’s title cut from his After the Gold Rush “album” on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3m_T-NMOs, I was inspired to write this poem. This kind of ekphrasis, like any other art-informing-art work, has often been a good way for me to defeat writer’s block. Sometimes the music sets the mood, and at other times, like with this song, the lyrics inspire the poem. A clear apocalyptic sense is picked up in the closing lyrics, which I adapt and adopt. The structure of the poem goes to a sense of chaos in the aftermath of an apocalypse and the uncertainty of the unknown.