Wishful Thinking
Day 399: a poem that lulls you with nostalgia before passing the buck & ending the world in environmental and climate calamity
Speeding past in electric modernity
Keeping pace with past times
Periodically slipping into view
And shaking hands across centuries
Metal track and waterways
Entwined in different races
Holding their respective places
In our cultural heritage
Industrial arteries become playgrounds
Meandering quietly in the late afternoon sun
Escaped garden plants and flowering weeds
Drape the banks in multicoloured patterns
Metal bridges over twinned metal strips
Jealous of canalside finery
Drape themselves in colours
Shaken from rattling cans
Held by hooded artists' hands at midnight
Multiple girdered bridges
Adorned in their brightest graffitied best
Carry rusting lines to empty sidings
Leaping over canal boats beneath my seat
Narrow boats and horses,
Vintage hand-started cars,
Steam lorries and traction engines,
Locomotives that breathed fire
And belched acrid smoke
All embraced and loved
Now become entertainment
Not the hard sinewed muscle
They were built and bred for
It seems we took the slow train home
All stations north and slightly west
If those old souls who carried the coals and grain
Those many years back could see this now
They'd marvel at the frentic pace
Of my sedate journey
Ponder the need for such speed
Stare dumbfounded at the magic horses
Invisible, full of hidden power
Each new age steals yet more land
From nature's feeble outstretched hand
Even metal horses hunger for food
Resources dug deep from fragile earth
Tracks forged in yet more fire
Ripped from the ground
And thrown into polluted air
All in the name of speed and profit
Balancing books that suffocate
Future generations
Everything risked on a blind throw
Of an unknown technological dice
Cans kicked further down the road
Wishful thinking thinking up plans
Making others responsible
For cleaning up the mess
Yet it's your problem to fix, not mine
I'm not the one who'll pay the fine
Consequence falls on your head
By the time it hits, I'll be dead
~
Climate disaster poems, (fun topic, huh?):
Photo by Jesse Cason
P.S. This image is called ‘white duck on water near boats’…
Really? You’ve never see a Swan before?
I especially appreciated how the poem begins by simply observing the landscape before revealing the deeper questions it carries. The images of old canals and railways lingering in the present stayed with me. Thank you for this thoughtful piece.