This poem was selected by the editors as the winner of the 2019 Aspen Poetry Prize.

Wesley Sexton
Mother Nature Learns Economics

One afternoon an observant earthworm
saw an aerator man make $50/hour,
and soon every gardener in the county
was taking out a personal loan to pay back
the hard-working invertebrates. Fruit flies
soon caught on and charged homeowners
a hefty waste removal fee. Municipalities
received unpayable bills from autumn maples
listing multiple quality-of-life surcharges.
Squirrels demanded back pay for oaks
planted in fall. In Northern California,
a community of garden spiders went on strike,
and 3 people died of malaria. Rainclouds
abandoned neighborhoods that couldn’t pay
their monthly subscription on time.
The cost of hiring honeybees to pollinate
fields and orchards soon became enough
to send most farmers into bankruptcy, and acres
of cultivated rows reverted to wilderness.
Local economies collapsed, and people
spent their days foraging to make ends meet.
Honeysuckle soon gained enough capital
to launch a reclamation project across America’s
largest cities, sending once-gleaming skyscrapers
into crack and smear. Today, many seek
gainful employment running errands for trees.
A would-be hedge-fund manager
spends whole afternoons begging
raspberry canes for a little sweetness.
Former oil tycoons plant wildflowers
for a cow they’d like to bother for milk. Despite
their efforts, millions of industrious humans
succumb to famine and thirst. Those remaining
survive by learning to accommodate Nature’s
every righteous whim. From far away, Earth looks
again like a Virgin Planet or some tangled mass
of yarn hanging against a black curtain.

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