The last days before it
Ends or begins again,
When the lines in the
Globe crack trees
Through the gap
And silt oil into
Dust, no one
Left to care
If the tap
Runs cold.
oil
What can we do?
Picnic on home-grown
Peas, post pamphlets predicting
Armageddon from fossil fuels,
Pay some banks some more
Peanuts to bet on African
Rain while cheap flights
Heat home for tea,
And guess what’s left?
Fish, freshly boiled in the sea.
This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Libya or Rome
What is it? It is a
Conversation piece
Dots on a tree in
Different colours –what
Do they mean? One two three
Four and more, so many
We cannot count them
Without difficulty, some
Times two or three double
Into one round hole deeper
Than the others but
No more cylindrical,
Difficult to make out the
Difference from a distance,
Need to go up close to
Identify the nature of each pock
And what it has done to the tree
Behind, an indelible spot has come from
A gun or guns that once hung
Loose and then was cocked quickly
Under arms and blasted
Hotly at thin air between
It and the street, shooting
Everything to Eternity unless
It is a tree that can
Clot holes more effectively
Than blood, poorly sheathed
In skin not bark that can accept
The heat of deafening pierces
Without shattering into thousands
Of flashing and shard-filled niches.
And the colours? They don’t look
Natural. Actually they represent
Each flag that fed this tree with
Shrapnel and thus paint
A portrait that is true and clear,
More than any pact or international
Treaty, a picture of collaboration
Between nations to cross fertilise
Wars whose ends are unsure but
Whose sustenance sustains the governments
Economically and physically, boundaries they’ve made,
The counter-pacts and terrorism they’ve
Deeply invested in to preserve
Something that openly calls itself
Freedom and, when it thinks no one
Will wikileak its oil, whispers
The real fight, supremacy, before all
Goes quiet again and the friends who
Share a quiet room
Sealed off from the noise, as yet
Unspotted, get off pock-free.
Being Every Day 