Concrete Trees

See our dancing sculptures embrace nature throughout no man’s land.
This equilibrium should thrive and writhe between each grain of sand.
Yet a struggling tug of war that’s stretched between Man and Mother
takes place across conflicted planes as one tries to smother the other.

Why did we tread with boots of lead on flower beds of crumbling soil?
Why’d we replace simple content with intent set to rule and spoil?
Why did we build the skyscrapers that scrape the sky with steely nails?
Why trap the flying winds of God’s own breath within our thrashing sails?

We captured endless landscapes but not in a photographic sense
but pastures and vast rolling hills woke one day divided by fence.
Houses of praise heaven invade and rip sentinel clouds to shreds;
their edifice obstructs the divine vision born in Godly heads,

for the steeple of the church pierces the one thing that it adores.
Meanwhile the broken bodies of the waves drift onto foaming shores
from where the water’s slashed and torn by vessels wielding a propeller.
Tracks of faceless birds lay cracks across the perfect interstellar.

The spear-like column tears a hole of ignorance as it salutes;
statuesque with solemn stance, this hapless weapon pays tribute
to weapons in a field somewhere that shower soil with soldiers’ blood.
With spheres of metal in their hearts, they fall on faces full of mud.

Concrete devours the grass and flowers who’ve seen so many rise and fall.
We run riot – pretentious, pious – thinking big but being small.
We pump the air with heavy smoke to choke the clouds and cloud their sight,
to sink like bombs; quick through the sky, to drag them out of gentle flight.

Engines roaring battle cries swallow birdsong without care
and stain their feathers with the fumes they spit and throw into the air.
Beyond the cars the drums of war beat once for every fallen tree.
Exhausted, Mother Nature stands, demanding we truce shakily.

The echo of her pleading’s  lost in thund’ring rumbling of machines
but angels hear and cry and pray their silver tears at last wash clean
the land, so birds sing undisturbed and winds blow big and free again
but our gutters and umbrellas catch and cage the falling rain.

As I round the corner evening sets on war and my reflection.
Then a final observation darkens my waning perception;
my eye drawn by the orange sky that lit a quietly praying nun,
hidden from God’s golden eye, the convent’s threat’ning back did shun
and plunge the grounds in shadow as its rising shape blocked falling sun.