Sonnet For Climate Change

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day?
Or to Fires that burn Forests and nests of Birds
To ash upon stolen Earth?

Charred seeds have always burst forth;
New Plant people who refuse to go quietly,
Thriving on heat of opposition to grow,
Grow, grow towards sun and sky,
Tickling Clouds with thirsty, beckoning Shoots.
Little green fingers steam uncertainly
In the absence of Rain and cool burns…
Longer and longer, absences grow
With dry Scrub and the knife edge
Of a single spark.
Their ancestors lived passionately with Fire,
Flames flirting with Leaves;
Now, dry bodies combust to the core,
Leaving charcoal skeletons scattered
Over crisp, cooked Roots and
Damaged Seeds.
Black sticks, that’s all that’s left…
Burnt to blazes.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day?
Or perhaps to the fury of Storms?
Remembered rumbles of slow, wondrous
Lightning auroras, their flashes dancing
Blue purple excitement and cool changes
Into the warm, humid embrace of summer Nights,
Seem less friendly each year.
Now, they strike fear
Into hearts, heath and high canopies with
The violence of their anger, force of their rage,
Speed of their despair.
These changes, not cool…
Not cool.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day?
Or perhaps still to the interrupted spark
Of ancient Lands once bathed
In the cool Smoke of kinship?
Extinguished camp Fires dotting Country,
Echoes of memories
Drowning in climatic infernos
That incinerate Soil, boil Pollinators, melt Glaciers,
Scald Coral Reefs into skeletal wrecks?
This burn is too hot.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Day?
Or just another day in Paradise Lost,
Thousands of years and millions of lives
Paid in full for a smooth road
To Hell?

No – I shall compare thee, Furious One,
To the roaring thrum of children’s voices
Echoing off the walls of
Concrete Forests,
Amplifying the smoulder of
Ancestral calls,
Singing old songs of
New science and new hope
That demand to be heard.
Reminders of life cool burn
In Earth-Kin eyes, staring desperately
Into the heat of change…
We will never stop fighting for you.

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