Mother Nature’s Timeout
A poem
Mother, tired of locking herself in the bathroom
for a moment of peace
and screaming silently into the towel pile,
has banished the children to their rooms.
Recalcitrant children, hiding behind masks,
yet the air is purer than it’s ever been.
For this brief moment, she breathes in serenity.
Birds chorus their approval to the day
and wildlife roams where once it feared to tread.
Sea-life heaves upstream to hunt
as the hunters marvel from behind the glass darkly.
A zoonotic role reversal.
We are grounded from the skies,
averted from dangerous games of fracking,
hacking at forests, drilling for oil,
from killing each other.
Contrails barely scar the dome overhead.
The ozone layer is healing.
Soon, she knows, we will resume.
She has no choice in that.
Even the most troublesome of children
cannot be confined indefinitely.
Will we remember our place
or venture ever further, to litter
the galaxy with our kind?
