Filtration of Grand Contamination Utilizing Existing Local Natural Resources

Evacuated in masks

Police waving us through

Behind, the empty maze of the town

The tree-tops and church spire above the smog

 

Its up to them now

Left in the small and seldom parks

Token plantings or contested

Borderlines rife with sycamore and ash.

 

Cemeteries, those left-lone tomb walks

Under the grand span of holm oaks

And cedars around the walls to block off.

Now each crack and cleft

Is for seed and root;

Each mausoleum corner waiting

To host shoots.

 

Gardens; how easily the delineations of property

Will be broken, eaten, slipped through.

Pavers obscured by the tide of green to come;

Where bramble will rove over fences it shall protect

The giants of tomorrow germinating underneath.

 

Their offspring

Sure to rise hungry for air

Vagrant in once-fussed lawns

 

Once harangued,

Always cut and poisoned

And bled and eaten and pulled

Now, Emperor.

 

Surrounded by concrete and none

With the power to freedom

But themselves

 

Though the smog blocks light

They rise above;

Weaknesses none, save staticity.

 

 

Though they, our half-thought

Grand-forebears, are saviours of breath

The engines of their pores and photosynthesis

Pumping overbearing carbon into oxygen and moisture

And locking or digesting impurities

 

I am not so sure

They will be happy re-contained

When we are given

The all-clear.