And The Forest Was No More

 

Precious resource, lung of the world,

What have they done to you?

Like Hansel and Gretel they scatter

Crumbs behind them to find their way

Back to where they left the dying dead,

The breathing, dying, and the world

A mess so tangled up in politics

Of world economy they do not know

What they have wrought, only what

They want to take and could not have:

They fought for resources not theirs.

The greed, the seed they planted here

And left to rot, has sprung the trap

Again and again in the midst of trees

Innocent of any wrong doing, victims

Only of the wrong of those who know

No laws but those they have created

For themselves, the rule of the mighty,

The rule of the rich who long to become

Richer still, but at the cost of so many lives,

And on the backs of those who did not have

The tools to fight and save their Mother Earth.

And so the forests die, from leftovers,

The little scatter-gun effective bombs

That shatter all and ruin living forests,

Burning them to cinders, killing all wildlife

Who made their homes within, blackened

Husks of ancient, mighty, green giants

That will never stand tall again or fill us

With their life-giving perfume full of oxygen.

Short term greed without a vision plundered,

And plunders still; the forest is no more.

 

© Nyuka Anaïs Laurent  20.11.2010