2018 and eco ongoing....
Thoughts on a Bus Journey in Norfolk, UK, 2018
It was an odd journey, the slow bus, an oblong block.
Moving against the skyline from Dereham to Easton. The 4.
In the fields from Mattishall onwards towards the hospital.
The birds were down, set in white against the field’s dust.
Silent, claws stretched out, statues that had stuck – a heartbeat
Stretched out. Perhaps an immortal hand had placed them tenderly?
Monopoly pieces ready for play. In a strange tableau - a montage
For a game that had no destination. When did the Rooks, or the Crows?
become white and grey? What are the elements that hurt them this way?
Are they as the people who live here about, who suffer the same fate –
Who appear as grey as aliens, paper thin, sliding into …?
oblivion, without family or belongings, or knowledge.
Or is the Volcano coming to the top, is the danger from below
Begins in molten rock, and gases that hiss out, between clods of earth.
Nature in revolt against our crimes of sanitation, our disgrace, our failure
To clean up this earth. The innocent, injured through illness and hurt.
The water too tainted with plastics and foul things, that have
Lived in our drains unheard of for years. We should have taken notice!
We should have known that Plastics that can’t be recycled should not be made.
We should have kept the Seas clean and watched for the Nature’s distress.
For when the birds fall, white, and shrouded by dust, we are less
a whisper in the scheme of things here… unable and unwilling,
To clean the World, or seek refuge in another… or perhaps our fate
Revolves around the devolution of our society in rubbish – bags and bag and bags…
Later – when the world is remade, a new civilization will come about,
And find a monument in plastic – set in a forest, and a statue of bird.
They’ll adopt it as a wonder of the world – little realizing their fate.
They will flap along in flip flogs, made of recycled sea plastics,
And wonder what fashion was, and whether it was eaten.
Language would begin to be a bother, past the one word
That held them close together.
Slow fate will stretch and seam the ends
Until they can repeat our mistake!
[c] Rosalind Lee 2018
