I am the watcher
the runner
unofficial custodian
alone
non-partisan
my feet pray
to mother earth
my breath
synthesises
salt-sea molecules
of sky
and my eyes
monitor
the ways
in sweeping surveil
from mountain
to ocean
and over there
the horizon
mine not mine
owned only
in a global
internal
knowing
tread the land
stomp the sand
it’s yours, ours, no one’s
take care
Photo: Claire Doble
the earth will take back
in heat and ordure
the shredded plastic bags
and bottle caps.
unbeautiful bits of nature
pond dust, saline scum and
damp piles of leaf and blossom scrofula
look like horror
brown-shiny beetles and chokey cockroaches
creep slow on sickly stick-legs
they take back the dirt
one insect footstep at a time while
seahorses attached to Q-tips
and seagullpigeons in rubber bonnets
are not raging like us
no
they merely persist
hoping to discover
that rubbish-island in the sea
the size of New South Wales
(because it’s bigger than Texas now)
– must be terra nullius for them
This poem was inspired by the novel Arkady (need to get back to polishing up my own dystopian story one of these days!) And also somehow by Singapore (pictured), a place where the lush fecundity of nature mashes with the nasty detritus and pollution of human industry.
Prince via http://www.wonderingsound.com/icon/prince/
The earth is sad / Standing in the purple rain
Oceans are dying / I love you more than I did when you were mine
A bleached-white Barrier Reef / Colour me taken aback
Fracking for those last drops of oil / Let’s go crazy
Slaves mine phone components / It’s hard for me to say what’s right when all I wanna do is wrong
An island of plastic bags in the sea / Would you run to me if somebody hurt you, even if that somebody was me?
Burning fossil fuels to light our lives / Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999
Disappearing whales, gorillas, tigers, bees… / Believe it or not, I started to worry
Waters rising, refugees drowning / The times
And we fight about gay marriage / Can’t we just let love decide?
Global leaders do next to nothing / I’d rather be the pope
We could drop the coal, the nuclear. Use wind and solar / Overcast days never turned me on
Things have got to change. Faster / You’ve got the horn so why don’t you blow it?
Maybe it’s too late / Maybe I’m just like my mother – she’s never satisfied
We’ve only got this one planet / Nothing compares 2 U
Today’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month prompt/challenge was to write a poem for Earth Day but I wanted to acknowledge the death of the great musician Prince, whose music has been around as long as I remember, and is an artist Himself and I really bonded over (among others). So I’ve done a cleave poem – a poem in two halves which can be read as two separate but totally different poems, while read together they form a third poem.
clairevetica 