Into a doze, post-prandial –
Today imagination floats,
uneasy scenes from lunchtime news
of rubble strewn where agèd starved,
grave markers where the unnamed lie,
armed guns and spearheads, leaving me
ballistic, rage with what should do.
See filthy water children drink,
sea ice-melt moving current thought,
for islands drown with stranded folk
on tidal reach (no closer moon),
as earth we know is undermined,
its treasure looted, veins cut through.
Repeat the drilling, and again,
clenched teeth, set jaw is mine again,
for world is dying, red for green,
full-blooded where once Greenman reigned;
of course we’ll cop it, for cop out,
diverting from tomorrow’s hope.
Alarm rings now, so woke, alert,
that strange reality about
to dawn as final judgement borne;
this crazy sphere, the absurd globe,
where humans think they overlord
seems doomed to its own suicide.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Poetry Potion. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com