The dolphins are getting Alzheimer's from algae blooms

caused by warming waters and toxic runoff

and you could see the bloodstains in Sudan 

from space.

The cobalt is mined by children

and the music is made by robots

and the grownups are wondering

where the fireflies went.

It is an elephant with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg.

It's a freshly emptied bed in the nursing home.

A hand offers you pills to numb the dissonance,

but you swat it away and howl naked in the thorns.

Somewhere there's an ibis on a piano 

in a junkyard in the rain.

Somewhere else there's a small boy

who has just learned the word "treasure".

"Look! Buried treasure!" he tells his dad.

"No. That's just glass worn smooth by the sea."

"Is that treasure?"

"No, that's just a shiny candy wrapper 

shimmering in the sun."

"Ooh! THIS is treasure!"

"No that's garbage. Put it down."

And the boy's vision changes

and he no longer sees the treasure in things.

He runs to join his dad 

and they walk together down the shore

through a dying world

of fading wonder

full of worthless beach trash.

"He is wrong," you whisper 

as the blood leaves your body.

"There is treasure everywhere."

Reading by Tim Foley.