It’s Because, or, Imaginary Weeds

It’s because the plant turned this way in the sun, its tendrils reached out just so, that the father had
   nowhere to go, got tangled up and could not reach his daughter, tangled as he was in green under
   blue, over brown.
It’s because the bark of the tree was a light dusty gray that, against the gray sky, the driver, his little
   hairs dancing as they’re able, holding his lover’s leg, does not see a differentiation of gray and make
   it back on the road, keep the car from becoming a can disposed by some littering giant.
It’s because some six-legged red muncher munched his way along the road of the branch, stopping at
   each vaulting pistil along the way, colorless but tasteful, the whole flower, and its surrounding
   leaves, a structure of taste, that the salads suffered from lack of herb, for a generation the family
  winced.
It’s because along our walkways, in rows like guards hired for duty, the trees and shrubs, like a fearful
   family letting out a shake only with the passing wind, give us think our city green and convince us
   that the vegetal’s alive and well, that it’s so easy to sell depravity as fortune, and the child stares at
   her screen.
It’s because the hibiscus and the hyacinth did not bloom their milky oranges, their pastel pinks and
   baby blues, that meaning on earth for a season took another turn, all reason could take the hue of
   doom, and the woman could believe anything, really, she heard on the television, and would have
   voted for a dead speaker with the right labels on it.
It’s because the canopy of the woods formed a room so pitch dark that any timid hiker would beg for
   fireflies to blink like night-lights, that it was cut down for lumber and cut down to size, that the skies
   are forced to shine maddeningly perpetual light, or given assistance by lamp lest sight be destroyed
   and the man feels locked in a day.
It’s because growth remains growth, even of relentless spreading algae, flowering in the deep, that an
   unwelcome greenery seeps into the blue, that the waters become unswimmable, that their sparkle is
   dimmed, and other beings, water-beings, one by one suffocate and perish, the larger ones the faster.
It’s because the leaves were all brown at her feet, or rusty red, or blacker than the center of ash, and
   long blown off the tree that wished to hold them for another month, because winter came early and
   the winter was long, that she realized the disaster and whispered to herself on the lane No more, no
   more.
It’s because soon enough there were no more plants, not even the desert shrubbery, save for the
   mockery of them we have in plastic melted down to the shape of draping leaves and bracing
   branches, they were all wiped out by the intense heat, by the intense cold, that the girl grew
   philosophic at eating the apple her mother gave her.
It’s because the apple seemed to be from nowhere, grown from nowhere, like biting into the conquest
   of nothing, like fallen seeds from nothing taking root in nothing, or taking root in some dream we
   had to be alone, that the apples grow the way they do, that we may eat of the vapid fruit.
It’s because it was all so slow at first, tolerable and barely noticeable, because when things started
   happening, when there was this rapid reduction of green and such consequences in ordinary life, that
   we were shocked at first, but then in time adapted to the new planet we created, with its artificial
   fate, its plastic trees and imaginary weeds.