The Justices Struggle to Opine

"When asleep, no one reasons,
Remembers or understands."
The mountains were cloud drowsing
Over Valhalla's ice fields.
A glacier over plain stone
Has both its own atmosphere
And its own wisdom, transient.

Is the Earth responsible
For her creatures and their storms?
Can one species take the blame
For the last interglacial
To vanish into fresh floods?
Common law obtains here now.
A dream crime earns no hard time.

The mountains, the ones not torn
Apart for tunnels or mines,
Might not care about our laws,
Our intentions, our effects
On the weather that slowly
Wear them down. Plate tectonics
Made them. Beauty unmakes them.

Beauty unmakes every one
Of us, from the hummingbirds
Feeding at artificial
Cane-sugar plastic flowers
In the fogs to the renters,
The humans, word-feeders,
Watching sleep's etchings erode.