Musings from my kitchen table by Marita O’Flanagan

We gorge upon our plates of plenty
The others left, their plates are empty.
With swollen bellies the babies cried
Without a scrap of food inside.
Our famine days have we forgotten
Our fields of stench – potatoes rotten
In world of plenty, we take our slot
How quick it is we have forgot.
We fume “The English took our land”
Now with world hunger we’ve had a hand.
Content to let them die like flies
No conscience – we avert our eyes.

The earth is ours – superior beasts
Nature left outside the feast.
Fishes cough up plastic booty
To destroy almost becomes ‘our duty’.
Birds lie limp upon our shore
Their sweet song will be heard no more
Drenched in oil their bodies tremble
Their powerful wings no longer nimble!
Animals scurry across our path
While we destroy their habitat.
The sun it shines with stronger light
While ‘deeper tans’ are our delight.

But now the earth puts up a fight
With floods, ice melts and oceans’ might
It takes a child to point it out
To make us think, she has to shout
“Shame, ye have destroyed our earth.
A monster has been brought to birth.”
It took a child with face of thunder
To talk us through our massive blunder.

The virus – should we look surprised?
We could have caused our own demise!
We ponder how the virus came
Could we have ourselves to blame?
Now we’re locked in isolation
Maybe victims of our own creation.