Playing Marbles (aka Old Style Fun and Games)
This tranquillity is weird
But not entirely bad
If nothing else it shows us
What a busy time we’ve had
Rushing to our workplaces
Driving here and there
Never in the right place
Not able to answer
Why we spend quite so much time
In a metal box
Burning up our atmosphere
And ticking down our clocks
And now the world is quiet
Everything is still
And suddenly the wild life
Come into town to chill
And hang out with the humans
Stuck behind their glass
The goats just chew the bushes
They’re laughing off, they’re as
Contented as a creature can
Be while in the city
But when things revert to “normal”
Will that not be a pity?
As all the fauna disappear
Back into the scrub
And planes once more pollute
As they traverse from hub to hub
The sky that is so clear
As if starting anew
Will once more have that tinge of murk
To dirty up the blue
But maybe if we’re lucky
Perhaps somehow we’ll learn
That much of our bold enterprise
Serves only to burn
All of our resources
Precious and finite
We think they are forever
But they’ll be gone overnight
Turned into smoke and ashes
Or stacked up in a heap
Floating in our oceans
That are becoming more deep
As ice melts from the glaciers
And Antartica accrue
And swell as warmth increases
As seas that ferment and brew
A cauldron of indifference
From man’s unyielding race
To get right to the bottom
Of the oil wells in such haste
As would make the ancients wonder
What’s this progress of which they gush
For although our lives were shorter
We were not in such a rush
To finish off the world
Through our excessive need
To feather every nest
With manufactured greed
And so I say Corona
Be off with you, be gone
But leave us a reminder
Of how we can be strong
By finding out what matters
And what we can do without
We need to hug our loved ones
But we need to have no doubt
That as we scurry to and fro
Sometimes we have to stop
And pause a while (to laugh and smile)
To sing and dance and hop
To trip the light fantastic
While being busy bees
It’s time for us to bend and scrub
And give thanks on our knees
Not to stoop in prayer
But to clean up all our mess
So once again our old blue green
Marble we can bless