they should have been more specific
when they said teachers need to be teaching
readers with more rigorous texts. so even though Edward Abbey
is not a writer
from their preferred canon,

I teach the books about a world of blowing up
different Keystone XLs
beer-blurried and Vietnam-shocked
in the red hot Southwest. my students like it.
the desert is already their heartbreak

landscape. we delve into the coal seam
metaphors; the Moloch roiling
beneath the surface, where uranium lives
an American dream is bulldozed
into the quiet places of the indian rez,

Moloch, the radioactive forever-lit cathedral.
do the testmakers mind if I reshape these
close readers into environmental acolytes? are they ready
for the next generation of wilderness folk,
hellbent Leopolds? sparking wildfires

of mind
from this public education imperative,
a teacher can make a mighty fine monkeywrencher
out of these standards.

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