Prints

I elevate my angle on reality:
the noise of saturday morning lawnmowers
ascends to my ears bluntly,
as I watch the imprint of man on mountain
in my silent ruminations.

I blink
twice to wipe away time:
the houses, streets, cars, gardens,
all the stains of civilisation,
undergo an instant naturalisation.
The alien flora alters itself
into indigenous fynbos…
gone are the port jackson stains
on the koppies that ring my perch!

What bliss!

The faint twitters of a sunbird
crescendo into my conscious world;
instantly the fluttering of its wings,
the rapid advance of a beetle,
become audible.

If only the footprint of our own development,
our steady war on our world,
could be wiped as easily as this:
the dual quivering of eyelids,
to delete ourselves from earth.

As I sit roosting I realise
that such a feat would merely sever
action from accountability:
we are man-, child-, woman-kind, all
responsible for our unearthly creations:
our ivory towers, carbon monoxide freeways,
inbred unnatural spaces, mountains of waste,
our consumer branded lives.

That we are ‘users’ becomes clear
in the contrast of creators.

I blink
again to stretch time forward
and this still semi sane space
jerks itself into a slum,
my mountain lookout now a
littered mound that reeks of rot.
All the land is long used up,
as if our actions sneak up on us
as we play hide and seek with
the cause and effect of our species.
The air is sulphur fumes filled
with the screams of our post-
industrial post-
natural world.

I blink
this barely sacred sphere
is but a heartbeat away
from being a skulking cesspit.

I blink
and breathe, my heart
races ahead in time and back again
as I dress myself in the activism
of loving this planet,
naturally,
not synthetically.

I blink
once more to return to my perch.
I am illuminated in my disgust.
This half mountain, half man place
moves me
beyond time, beyond the revulsion
climbing in my throat.

I blink
a tear, a wry smile
and shrink my own footprint smaller still
as if to twist the arm of all humanity.

© 2006 lucille greeff