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SINCE I LIVE NOW ON THE WIND
By James W. Hackett

 

 

 

 

 

SINCE I LIVE NOW ON THE WIND

 

Since I live now on the wind

wafting in from the sea,

I dread the suffocating lulls

when both sky and land fade

into the fuming hell of man.

 

The flowering hours of my garden

once blessed with butterflies

of every size and hue––

have emptied

from the dancing grace of a few

into the loneliness of one,

to none . . .

 

Beauty that winged

through eons of creation

decimated within a decade

by our rampaging pursuit

of progress.

 

What a master of war is man––

with death and destruction

he is supreme;

yet how easily the blessings of peace

are forsaken by the ideologues

who could destroy life’s dream.

 

How long will fate allow us

to tilt the world

into an ever more cataclysmic course

with our careening technology?

 

For man–– the paragon––

is so off-centering the wheel of life,

the sun of some tomorrow

might well dawn

upon the insensate prospect

....of a moonscape earth.

 

© 1983, 2004 by James W. Hackett