A Climate Changer
While sitting alone facing the sun
She protests to people who don’t listen
A planet on fire is a smoking gun
With people adrift without a mission
Saying her views instead of school learning
With rough seas rising, icebergs are melting
Clueless leaders ignore her warnings
Pretending their concerns to be helping
But with the media a questionable liar
An angry Greta warns as she screams
Shouting out loud “ our world is on fire
How dare you have stolen my dreams”
Mistakes can be seen and are now turning
Still they complain about her school learning
An Old Chap painting
An old chap sits on the top of a cliff painting
Ageing quietly looking out to an hostile sea
His mind full of climate change
As he stares out to incoming waves
With easel and paint
He paints with an elegant style
Painting large fish on a restless sea
Starfish and seashells
Beauty abounds in his head
While the sun points to the horizon
Glistening the skyline
Sending hazy satisfying thoughts to his head
The breath of rivers flow from town to town
Cottages covered with histories of
smugglers and shipwrecks
Appear in his mind’s eye
With restless oceans ringing in his ears
But a muddy murkiness enters
With a darkish scene exploding
Into the environment
Showing a bruised and battered planet
He is saddened to his very core
Hurting like a grieving parent
In the absence of the prodigal son
But what can he do
He’s only an old man with his paintbrush
His love of sea and land is his passion
He doesn’t understand the reticence
Its like like forgetting to turn an oven down
He knows science tells the truth
But only a few listen
Waiting for the oven to turn
While burning bread mimics a scorching earth
The old man continues to watch
As boundless waves rise and fall
The shoreline refuse to shrink
As more land joins the swelling seas
Jim Mallin