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Open Poetry #44
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WindWalker
Senior Member
since 2001-10-12
Posts 1218


0 posted 2009-02-24 04:28 PM


When I was young - seems so long ago;
I sang the old Earth song along with many:
We were young hearts filled with hope
and buoyed by faith in endless things:
things needing no explanation
for we were sure they would ever work.

Mother Earth we called this place, we called you;
in our meetings and sit-ins and groups
where we called for peace; for understanding
and made ourselves aware as best we could
of the sad state of your environment--
and so easily failed to make the connections.

And the train, if there ever was one,
left without us -- we married and got jobs --
just like the ones before us whose ways
we thought we so despised.  Oh what fools
these mortals be -- and they were us.
Oh yes, how easily we were fooled.

But times have changed, as times must --
I have grown old, and so everyone else
and in your own way, so have you, Earth.
And our old song now echoes off key
like an old Fifties tune on a scratched LP:
discordant, out of place, meaningless.

I've observed another Christmas go by --
watched the hype and even was recipient
of some unexpected special wishes...
but you, Earth, had your own way of celebrating:
140,000 plus humans and countless other life
wiped out overnight in a tsunami... Not bad.

Mother Earth?  I asked myself in the night,
trying to put faces and names to these I shared life with!
My, haven't you grown into the great bi-tch!
You let countless rich bas-tards rape you to death
and turn your anger on the poorest of the poor --
Have you lost all sense of decency --
or have you always been a prostitute for the System?

Ask the right question, get the right answer
so I've been told, time and again:
Ah, the sly way you turn tricks for the rich,
opening up your remaining stores of riches:
resources galore for wars and Wal-Marts!

But the poor die without water or food,
bombed and poisoned, slaughtered without mercy,
pushed out into your empty deserts --
crushed underground, drowned under the sea;
and predators fly, walk, creep and swim unhindered
making life hell for their victims --
and no can see; no one can reason... or so you think!

I've become observant: years can do that to some --
and I had warned you I would not remain docile
if you tried to play me for a fool like the rest:
I'm free to speak out -- I'm not your child, Earth.

And how do you like this new song now?
You should have let me go when I gave you the chance:
now it's too late, I've written the report.

© Copyright 2009 Sharran WindWalker - All Rights Reserved
secondhanddreampoet
Member Ascendant
since 2006-11-07
Posts 6394
a 'Universalist' !
1 posted 2009-02-24 04:53 PM


I REALLY love the beginning of this!:

"When I was young - seems so long ago;
I sang the old Earth song along with many:
We were young hearts filled with hope
and buoyed by faith in endless things:
things needing no explanation(!)"

some of us tiny, fading 'wilderness voices' are still singing the "old Earth song" ...

much applause for a typically 'thought provoking' penning from this fine author!

Blood.Wolf
Member
since 2009-02-09
Posts 54
GA, USA
2 posted 2009-02-24 10:10 PM


the beginning is quite amazing!  actually, the whole thing is...

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."
~Rudyard Kipling

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