Poetry and Writes

Devastation (POEM)

The thinnest forest
The darkest sky
       The lowest-lying sickly brush
       Between the road and I--

A piled mountain
Gnarled peaks
       Dead lanes snaking throughout the hills
       And infecting blackened creeks--

In the valley
Progress spins
       Stained human activity
       Causes the forest still to thin.

I feel a sorrow
In my chest
       And a stir of emptiness at
       The silence of the robin red breast.

For years and years
This has been coming--
       The slow starvation of the land,
       The cold dread in my stomach thrumming.

No longer calls
The meadowlark
       No longer do the poplars stand,
       Crying to the rainclouds, "Mark"--

No longer does
The morning sing
Or the regal night fall--
       Now, the land is nothing, no
       It snivels, crouches, crawls--
       Overwhelmed by vast and curdled waste
       That has ultimately consumed all.