Philip Harvey
Why be afraid.
Signs everywhere,
A fallen bird,
the dead bugs
in yellow grass,
nothing remains.
Schoolchildren watch things pass,
no questions.
Before these houses
filled the hills
we knew
no pain
grandparents tending the garden.
Or, before time,
chaos modulated into
civilising climate change,
what had we
to worry.
Our hills
shone with forests,
cycads were fountains.
Or, closer to home
ego arguments
divided continents
along state lines,
empire meant
oppressor and oppressed,
everyone slave
to an illusion.
What of it?
We observe the shifts
on colour screens.
But answers
to our fear
the gouging pain
and grudging antidotes,
after all
what can they be?
We will leave too
and feel no more
like all before,
unremembered remembered.
Philip Harvey is a Melbourne poet. He is published widely here and overseas. He keeps two literary blogs. One collects his word studies in poetry, image, and essay: http://wordsbyphilipharvey.blogspot.com.au/; the other is a site for his readings of poetry, critical, creative or philosophical: http://clippingandcoining.blogspot.com.au/. Philip is the Poetry Editor of the online journal Eureka Street.
Liked this pared back use of poetic justice very much
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