3

Dudo Jr. sprang into action and headed into the woods.
The flora and fauna sang to him.
His senses were brighter and more open.
He felt no pain from his missing arm.
He no longer felt hungover or human.
The lenticels in the trees breathed with him.
The stomatas and the leaves spoke strange whispers.
He was aware of photosynthesis.
The puddles vibrated with muck.
The frogs and insects sang in tune.
He was reminded of a Walt Whitman poem.
He was ecstatic.
He contained multitudes.
He moved uphill through the bluffs, loafing and smiling
towards the parked bulldozers
and excavators—
earth destroyers.
He felt empathy for the simpletons who operated them:
the Joe Six-Packs and the corn farmers.
He wished they could become what he had—
touched.
Even though he had a near-death experience and lost an arm,
he did not have empathy for the machines.
Dudo Jr. reached the clearing at the edge of the woods,
where the equipment was lined up.
He climbed into the first giant yellow machine
and found the keys conveniently left in the ignition.
He started it up
and turned the giant tracked machine down the dirt road toward the river.
The machine creaked slowly down the dirt road.
Dudo Jr. struggled with the controls,
inching toward his goal.
He arrived at the old boat ramp,
lined up the machine,
pulled all the levers forward,
and bailed off just in time—
as the yellow bulldozer submerged into the river
and disappeared into its brown, polluted water.

Dudo Jr. sang as he watched,
the words coming from the Aether,
the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere.
Things from the earth.