State of the Planet

This poem was a very detailed by imagery of words; as well as, ardor and revulsion filled. The title "State of the Planet" illustrated what this poem was about, where the planet is and more about the sad fact of where it is and headed due to the fact that the human race is unable to take care of it because lack of care and/or understanding of it's beauty or simply that they are in denial and think that ignoring the problem will make it go away.

The beginning of the poem began to paint the picture of earth being angry and/or agitated with the girl in October, with the 'rain lashing the windshield'. Painting an image of a schoolgirl, that when you think of a schoolgirl you think innocence and nothing could happen to her, but her hair is flying everywhere. Her red backpack getting wet. This is strong imagery which I can interpret as the Earth lashing out unto humanity for the way humanity has treated Earth. In way God lashing out on us. Which is without respect and dignity, according the author. At least that is what I understood. The book "getting to know the planet", which the schoolgirl is holding paints a picture of how we humans need a book to tell us about the planet we live because of our 'hunger that is metaphorical'. Just like the spilled milk that was 'accidentally spilled' but she was not really hungry.. hmm. That shows how we claim that we care about the planet, but when the omissions that are given off by our vehicles go into the air are not 'intentional' yet we still do it.

I can tie this into our walk with God at times. He gives us the natural resources and beauty of his life and yet with our hands we can either build it up or destroy it.  That's a lot of power. Yet, God always shows us that He is in control by natural disasters. Just look at the devastation that just occurred in Japan. Wow, so horrific my brain can not even comprehend the impact! The poem would say Earth is lashing out, but I would say God is lashing out. God is so powerful that often we take that for granted, me included.

Back to the poem, I could see how this poem talked about the evolution of Earth and how it all started so beautiful that we right now can not image the beauty of it. That we take the resources from the planet and use it for our own pleasure. For example, "we have fashioned sexy little earrings from the feathers, highlighted our cheekbones by rubbings from the rock." This demonstrated me quite an image with the word 'sexy', usually when you think something sexy I think lingerie or something else. The author really wants to show the selfishness in humans hearts of taking what this planet has provided for our own desires. I think it was a bit too much, but it definitely got his point across.

Some parts of the poem that got me a bit confused was the vocabulary. However, google was a great source and I looked up the words that brought more meaning and understanding to 'State of the Planet'. Such words included:

Idioms: A use of words peculiar to a particular language.
Ardor: Intense feeling of passion, love, or strong eagerness
Revulsion: Strong feeling of violent disgust
Raucous: Unpleasantly loud and harsh. Distributing public peace, loud and rough.

These words portrayed a more vivd picture of the authors point of view. I liked how biology of cells was inputted into the poem, being a science major. It's true how amazing and a 'miracle' of how cells divide and replicate and how DNA ends up making up who we are. "The curled musical ladder of sugars, acids." That is my favorite line in the poem. This to me, gives a closer look to Gods glory and amazing works!

The ending talking about death and how eventually everything will die, "We know we're going to die, to be submitted to that tingling dance of atoms once again, it's easy to feel our lives are a dream." Wow such beautiful language.. 'tingling dance of atoms'... this shows beauty in the ashes,

There is so much interpretation you can receive from this poem, such wonderful use of words that are short and to the point that pierce the meaning right to the core.