You said to write about the mangroves
and I said “the mangroves?
What’re they?”
but I didn’t say that out loud
because I wanted to seem smart
so I filed it away
but didn’t do anything about it
because I never do anything about anything
because I’m cool like that
and now I see that the mangroves
are receding in the Everglades
and I wonder if maybe they’d have been saved
if I had only written that epic comic poem
about their fate a month or two ago
when I didn’t know about the mangroves
and what’s wrong with them
and if I’d shined a light on their plight
with my clever little internal rhymes,
possibly the world would have come to a realization
about what needed to be done
but it’s not like I know what needed to be done
about the mangroves
or about you
or about me
or any other human or plant
on the planet
or cats either.

I’m a mess
just like the mangroves, probably,
not that I know any more about them
than I did when you suggested
I write about them
whenever it was you suggested I write about them
(and now I wonder
why that came up in the first place).

I think maybe I should read the article
about what’s going wrong
with the mangroves
before I use the word “mangroves” again
even though it’s a whole lot of fun to say.

Mangroves.