THE LONG TODAY

 

FRANCISCANCE

GOODBYE, CAR!

ALIGHT

ONE JOB

NOWISE

TEETER

WEEP OCEANS

OLD SONGS

CLOUDSEED

WIND FARM

Photo: Penny Hill Wind Farm from Wickersley Gorse, South Yorkshire, taken by the author

GRASP THE NETTLE

Photo credit and thanks to Engin Akyurt from Pexels

EARTH HOUR

Photo credit and thanks to Pixabay

THE LAST EARTHWORM

Inspired by reports in the UK press showing the massive decline in earthworms is due to over-cultivation, toxic pesticides, herbicides, nitrates, phosphates and insecticides, plus anti-wildlife government policy is contributing to songbird decline. Yet still ignorance insists on scapegoating other birds like magpies and sparrowhawks for natural predation as if they're the culprits!

PLEASE, SHOOT ME NOW, IT'S BIN DAY!

Please, shoot me now, it’s bin day! There’s another wheelie more -
The patio’s getting crowded, bins are queuing at the door.
The green bin was for garden waste, today it’s paper and card.
I’d go and check but truly, it’s a squeeze out in our yard!

The brown bin’s grass and clippings, now, the blue box is no more,
Which used to take the tins and glass that now the black bin’s for.
Stickers announce this black bin, which spent years as household waste,
Is now for plastic, glass, and foil and trays no food has graced.

So what about the fourth bin with its lid of shocking pink,
For which the townsfolk voted? Let’s have a little think.
Oh yes, this rosy rubbish bin that smacks you in the eyes
Is for all the waste remaining, though it’s scarcely half the size

Of the black bin it’s replacing, and when all is said and done,
Council tax will pay for three bins, but the brown bin’s on its own,
With its separate solo payment, and its own timetable too.
Confused? Well, you soon will be! Trash is coming after you!

If we want to save the planet, if we want to heal the Earth,
Then we need to get recycling more, for all that we’re still worth!

BELLA AQUA

Photo credit: Pixabay via Pexels.com

Spill. Splurge. Swilker.

We splosh. We slop. We slurp.

O Bella Aqua! Wondrous water!

Today we keep you prisoner,

Aerate you not by thrilling plunge

Cascades where you can shimmer,

Shiver, shatter, shine in rainbow,

But by brutal blasts of CO2

In plastic bottles a-fizz with death,

Drunk by our drunken

Toxic passing foibles,

Seething our sludge of poison

Back to Mother Ocean.

As river we pollute you

With our casual cast-off,

Our heaving landfill

Shores up sea defences

Against the tide of taint

We've boiled and brewed,

Seeping and leaching

Through the thirsty land.

Casual we jerk the tap

To drain your flood and flow

At every blindfold whim of wastefulness.

Bless your primordial founts and fonts,

Your chuckling wellsprings,

Mirrors of genesis,

That we once honoured

As our liquid life,

Vital as breath,

We lapped with silence on our lips.

Instead we have abandoned

Your secret sacred surging

To nodding donkeys

And the fissures of frack.

HOWLS OF HOME

LIVING THE DREAM

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

Turned on the morning news

And overnight

Children

Have only gone and

Let all the animals out of their traps and cages

Inspired gangs to throw their knives into the fire

Sown woodlands to heal frack crack and landfill

No-one can pick a side now for standing as one.

Threatened ones dance in diversity out of danger

Cures and care are now funded by giving a damn

Trolls set up helplines for those they have bullied and beaten

Peace reigns with volume and vilify put on mute

Foodbanks just folk tunes hummed by long remembrance

Plastic just melting as healthy as foam on the seas

Then we

Woke up.

To ourselves.

Didn’t we?

WE BE CREATION'S CRYING

Bonded
To this body of birds
Wheeling in freeform flock

Rooted
Radical in earthball
Tendrils tucked
Through trackless undergrowth

Voice of the heartstop hare
From her barren form,
Whisper and whicker,
Melt and bloat

Ductile seductive
Plastic at the seabird's throat,
Barnacles losing purchase
On the toxic rock

We be creation's crying
Syrinx singing
Solidarity
With rhythmic sobs
Please cope

Struggling to shine afresh
The sun slinks up,
Wandering west
To wash the waste
Pale gold
Wanhope.

HERE BE NO DRAGONS

Here be no dragons

Though stiffened necks nod

Over greenbelt and wildwood

No breathing integrity 

Of flame and tongue

Here be duplicity

Wolfing up landscape

Flogged to the fattest

Fracking our green

Blindfold off the cliff

St George with his breastplate gone

Bare to the drill