Poetry

Troubled

Woke up to an empty house

Troubles in this world

troubling my soul

Down by the water

should cheer me up

I’m searching for those messages

Flowers planted along Sunset Drive

Some still holding summer’s smile

others faded and shrivelled

I wish the eagles would come and chase away

my melancholy

Container ship passing by

What will it take to wean us from some of our comforts

so that others would be less poor?

Just giving up a cup of coffee causes major

upheaval in my head and heart

A tree is cut down

apparently because the roots are pulling up the sidewalk

Why don’t they just move the sidewalk?

They do in India

Inconvenient, yes, but spares the life of a tree

What is life worth to us anyways?

I feel we are mixed up about that question

I remember a wise man once said

“one’s life does not consist

in the abundance of his possessions”

He was warning us about greed

It’s a time in history again

where we need to be inconvenienced

stretched and changed

It is a time to value life and protect it

Desperate refugees

Unborn children

Trees

Our very planet

What will we do?

Will we listen to the voices of the wise

or close our ears and hearts

and hope it will all go away?

Oh, it will all go away

Quickly if we don’t do something

about our destructive ways

Life is fragile

delicate as

a butterfly’s wings

yet resilient

able to heal and restore

Let’s not push things beyond

the limit here

We still have time

© 2015 Julie Clark