POETRY
Clean Skies
Remembering the message of last spring
A year ago a messenger
Was sent to Earth to slow us down,
A little airborne passenger,
Upon its head — a thorny crown.
“Be still,” it said “and you shall see
What Earth looks like without the haze.”
“This is the state your home could be
If you’d employ more mindful ways.”
We shut down factories, grounded flights,
The smog dispersed, exposing skies.
Soon images from satellites
Revealed the truth before our eyes.
The mess we’d made, an awful sight,
In just one month the dark was gone!
We saw, believed, and it felt right —
The new path we’d embark upon.
A year has passed, flights now resumed,
Production rates in factories rise.
Our wasteful ways again exhumed
To bury us ’neath dirty skies.
The lesson of the messenger
Was lost to saving human lives.
We failed to see the grave danger —
The losses from polluted skies.
