John Grey

Two Poems

SHOPPING MALL INFINITUM

Well, life has the soul
at least.
What spirits the trees?

And to what end the shopping mall not made?
Some constructions jobs gone AWOL?
A developer's empty wallet?
So the choice:
pine or parking,
purse or protoplast.
And for me, this scarred sense
of living in the industrial world.
Already, the bulldozers, earthmovers.
Can two for one sales be far behind?
For trees, resistance is sickeningly thin.
Some are ripped out by the routes.
Others go through fire.

Soon enough, business is business.
People are born and soon
they'll be needing stuff.
Eventually, there's just
a few who know which stores were stones,
what fast food chain
squats atop the ghosts of ridges.
They remember, these were woods
once, years before.
The few who predate
remember predation.

THE LAST CHILD TO SEE A TREE

A forest among us,
becomes a weeping
in white heat,
green-leafed bereavement
to us city folk.
Today we wake
to dying evergreen,
blood-red,
creation's core
deep in mire,
dendrite reduced to its
gritty elements,
no forest scene but
dust imbedded in these eyes,
no bed but a cradle of fury,
grief, no relief in sight ...
and there's the infant,
just itself,
looking about
as if it's all its kingdom ...
look at this, mother,
millions of years of creation,
and my screams so morbidly
moving civilization
one step closer
to no longer.

© John Grey 2013

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Vallum and the science fiction anthology, “The Kennedy Curse” with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Pennsylvania English and the Oyez Review.