Poetry – One Mother Many Sons – a poem about the overpopulation crisis, migration and the rape of the natural world.
One Mother Many Sons
Sometimes I despair of what we are doing. The overpopulation continues – producing huge numbers sweeping all before it in a mad rush for space, food, water and shelter.
Mass migration, deforestation, desertification, desecration, fanaticism, desperation, slaughter of life, butchery and death. The mantra is for more growth, more expansion. The rich get richer. The poor starve in the midst of plenty. The numbers increase by the minute. A mad hurtling forward. Everyone looking after their own
Mad belief that it will all work out.
What can we do?
Get on with our lives.
While those at the top scheme and cream from their yachts and penthouse suites. And those at the bottom dream of pent-house suites and yachts.
One Mother Many Sons
One mother in the bush
Under the sun
Holding her child
In the wild,
Her only one.
Passing down her line
To roam and redefine
The changes
Strong and true
As her family grew.
Through many threats
And chance
They came through.
A mere two hundred thousand
Years flew
As the eyes peered
And minds grew
Flint to steel
And spaceship crew
Conquering all before
In rabid mode
Into space
To explode
With a mantra of ‘mine’
And bombs to
Unload.
Now seven billion on the shore
Chopping, slaying
For ever more
With nothing left
To remain
Of the wonders around
That we disdain.
Heading for ten billion
Without a care
As we settle every score
With seething brain
And madness as our pillion.
Twenty billion on a sterile ball
Of plastic joy
And concrete and steel alloy
Still heading on
Is the best we can do.
Thinking a hundred thousand
Years more
Is our due.
Yet the next fifty
May well see us through.
Adieu, Adieu…… Adieu
They’ll be nothing left
To miss you.
Opher 10.9.2015