A "beautiful" story for Christmas...

...or any other time - about magic, truth, trust and saving the world.

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Casey & the Surfmen

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329. Extinction Reality

OK – I’m putting the blog into hibernation for December – and prior to the general election. Large swathes of the ordinary British working class public, voting for Boris Johnson, a man who openly despises them, is more than I can stomach.

So – turning to the subject which should be occupying our minds every minute of every day – the environment – I’ll leave you with this thought, something I’ve pushed many times in my writing –

As we trash our planet like a bunch of rabid, delinquent, spoiled brat teenagers whose parents have stupidly gone away and left them in charge of an exquisite home full of priceless possessions, we should remind ourselves that the significant species least likely to survive or recover is us. Humans.

This idea is the driver for my dystopian novella  Zero One Zero Two (see ref in last week's post) and the poem, below, is one which features in that story. (Yes I’ve chucked a bit of poetry in a dystopian novella – get over it.) In this piece, in the penultimate chapter, the main protagonist is considering what may be left of the earth.

Does the Sun Still Shine

by Amanda Baker

Does the sun still shine

Do rivers still dance

Do breezes caress the trees

Does an apple still blush on a branch somewhere

Do flowers still flirt with bees

Does a waterfall crash where nobody hears

Does the Okavango delta still

Wash with Africa’s tears

Do elephant bones lie bleached and broken

Are shorelines kissed by the sea

Are dead cities shadowed with ghosts and regret

The great whales just a memory

Is there a footprint left by me

Does a white moon glow where nobody sees

Could cathedral sunsets

Still bring me to my knees

Does the kestrel cruise with a predator’s grace

While a vole marks his shadow, beware

Are the turrets and towers toppled and gone

Are the Great Plains stripped and bare

Is there anything there

Does rippling heat flatten the desert dust

Where scorpions arch and cacti pose

And camels have wanderlust

Are mountains still dappled by giddy cloud

Is my memory only a dusty store

Pale pretty pictures of paradise

Images of things that are no more

An empty room without a door

Our plundering and ravaging bore malformed fruit

Are the oceans and skies forlorn

Are forests blind and mute

Or

Does the sun still shine

Do rivers still dance

Do breezes caress the trees

Does an apple still blush on a branch somewhere

Do flowers still flirt with bees

Does a waterfall crash where nobody hears

Does the Okavango delta still

Wash with Africa’s tears

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Happy Christmas with an old doodle from 2013

See you in January 2020