Refining Daylight

It's midnight under a cotton candy sky.
Exxon is refining daylight.
The flares paint the clouds
with the unneeded and unwanted spirits
of petrochemicals.
Too much of this and some of that leftover.
It all goes to the stack and burns in the night air.
Waste not, want not, wish not, want not.
The flare fades to a smoky glow against the morning sky, its job finished,
and I wonder what lesson I have missed,
of how to burn the waste until the want is extinguished
and if anyone looked to the sky,
the night I went to the stack.