Small prayers
Earth lies heavy, compressed, depressed, comatose under concrete
as the city sweats a fever dream of glass and steel
and pavements fry in stark white glare.
Thermals of greenhouse gases rise silently, unseen.
A lonely tree stands wilting in its pot, the token green.
A lonely tree stands wilting in its pot, the token green.
Earth is covered, smothered in hot bitumen and brick
Forests razed where deer once browsed
birds sang and rabbits grazed, erased, for a new house
birds sang and rabbits grazed, erased, for a new house
Engines manufacture noise from nothing but air and fossil fumes.
Plastic rolls consumed, planted for blind grass and empty blooms.
A bee flies past inert lawn as life looks on, remembering, once
each pile of leaf and stack of twig was home to someone
bright wildflower meadows stood in pools of dappled shade
glades where butterflies danced, countless creatures thrived,
now only their pale shadows survive, helpless against the building tide.
Yet all life springs from life in the same way, slugs and slime-moulds share our DNA,
We eat from the same soil, blossom in the same sun,
Share the same air, toil on the same blue-green sphere. Everyone
Share the same air, toil on the same blue-green sphere. Everyone
can love something. Kneeling, supplicant, I wage organic warfare, quietly
Sowing, growing; each plant my own small prayer for nature, a piety.
