Acceptance (Brown Houses)

Acceptance (Brown Houses)

Upon the white beach, beside the blue sea,
Where children run laughing, and birds fly free,
Stand two rows of brown houses.

Amid the sounds of spray and surf
Between the sun and it's warmth on earth
A thunder strike shatters the gentle waves.

A vat of rain suddenly drops from the skies
Hits the red faces and starts up the cries
Of people rushing to their brown houses.

Inside we are safe, locked in from the cold,
The slow and the fast, the young and the old,
Not one face lost to the darkness.

Through our windows the sky is black
And we stand pondering the very fact
That the weather can change so on a summer's day !

Then sheaves of snow flutter down without warning
My father starts sighing about Global Warming
My brother goes outside and tries to catch it in his mouth.

I peer through the glass, behind the brown curtain
And press up my face, to try to ascertain
Whether those ice-capped mountains had been there before.

I call for my brother to stop messing around
As yet another change of the weather is announced
And the children are best to be locked inside.

The straggling black goats that appeared on the hillside
Are whipped up and forced down and battered on all sides
By a wind that moves houses but can't move brown houses.

So we sit down in armchairs and complacently feel
That none of this weather is actually real
And we wait for the Gods to decide what to do.

When the wind ceases roaring
And the trees drop from soaring
Then the silence is wrapped up in silence around it.

Outside our windows seen through a deep shimmer
Are thick plains of dust, and somewhere a glimmer
Of waterholes, promising rest from the heat.

I run up the stairs leading to the brown roof
And shout to the houses "Which one is the truth?
"All of these landscapes can't really be here!"

But nobody answers, noone has listened
Beneath me the houses stand still as if sleeping
Downstairs through the warm rooms a TV flickers.

I want to jump down and break legs in the desert
But the death of the heat signals change in the weather
And I am too scared to stay longer up here.

Inside we are safe, the houses are strong
Nobody feels we've been in here too long
We know when the soft sun returns, we can rush back outside.

For the beach will spring up, as will the blue sea,
The children will run and the birds will fly free,
And the two rows of brown houses will evermore stand !