SEEDS.
On sodden streets that drew the glow
of an early-morning café window
workers trod their tired routes
in damp and clinging skirts and suits.
Some peered out from waterproofs
as run-off ran off shining roofs
choking every spout and drain
with biblically persistent rain.
Huddled in the window seat,
broiled in English Breakfast heat,
I broke a yolk with buttered bread
and chewed on what the paper said
while rags of steam and vagrant grease
moistened every fold and crease
and settled on the window pane
until both sides seemed soused in rain.
As the scene outside dissolved
I read how conflict still revolved
around some thinning river’s course;
how blood still runs for this resource
that falls for days and floods and drowns
low-lying villages and towns
that fight to keep the water out
while others, elsewhere, suffer drought.
All I read appeared to seal
a fate which lay beyond repeal;
as if we’d made ourselves bereft
and faced what little choice was left.
Stepping from the narrow seat
as chastened as I was replete
my stained and empty plate recalled
that state of grace consumption stalled
when Eve gave Adam pregnant fruit
and two bites found them destitute.
But what fresh knowledge they acquired.
What a boom their greed inspired;
free to sew and reap and sew
and reap the whirlwind we now know
by names that nod to gods and storms
as everything around us warms.
Outside, hunched and heavy browed,
I skirted puddles traffic ploughed
as slick umbrellas tipped and swayed
in passing-wagon-drafts that sprayed
a filthy spritz across my face.
Quickening my antic pace
I went to work, and by degrees,
forgot those atoll-eating seas.
Travis Brow
Thu 11th Jun 2015 07:16
Hello Harry, the original poem was simply based around me sat in a cafe on a wet day watching people passing by. Then it developed, haphazardly, into what you see here.
In the beginning it ended with the fourth verse. But i thought it needed more. So, in sum, the idea is this; the climate is screwed, it would seem, and it's our fault. We're consuming the very sources of our existence, and increasingly paying the price, or at least other regions of the world are.
The Seeds of the title then, are those sown by Adam and Eve, the original 'consumers' whose eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, started the ball rolling. Evolutionarily, we continued what they started and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Essentially, it's an environmentalist poem, although, as the end suggests, because the 'natural disasters' mostly occur overseas, we can largely ignore the issue.
That said, it's this very ignorance, in the affluent 'West' that prevents any serious tackling of global warming - hence being able to forget those 'atoll-eating seas'.