The Wake of Progress

A letter to BP

Author's Note

The old woman weeps silently
as she boards up the cabins
Her family has welcomed guests
to this spot of paradise for generations
It is all gone now…

Two men, father and son, walk stoicly
and silently away from their drydocked boat
A for sale sign is attached to her weatherbeaten hull…

On a blackened beach, a lone pelican slumps dejected
Covered with dark viscous death, he stands watch
amid his dead and dying brothers

In an ocean choked with crude
can you hear the screams of terror and agony
as nations of fish and crustaceans die?
Can you comfort, Gaia, our earth mother and giver of life, as she is faced with so much loss?

I ask you corporate spoilers, can you put it all back?
Paradise to the old woman?
Dignity to those fishermen?
Can you breath life back into a dead ocean?

You only take, and think nothing
of what you leave for unborn generations
you reach out and steal the future
with no shame and no concience…
Do you even see the world dying in your wake?