Inventing softness
is hard. Nature has us
beat on give—
in the suppleness
of wind and pulp.
Easier to engineer
plumbing than water.
Look at the bananas
in a child’s
kitchen—all plastic.
See how we
fix the lilt of the human
voice into Helvetica,
to text it. Concrete
we can make, but not
leaves. What breeze we
manufacture is pushed
from a compressor
and grates like traffic.
There’s no fungus, no beach,
no snowman in our factories.
Even boxed tissue is bound
to have a stiffness.
So our dumps fill up
with tin and molded
oil, trash that
lacks the slack and
spring of soil.