Acid rain falls on purple mountains
Running in rivulets,
Burning the land
That once embraced its falling.
Downhill, it flows,
Unrelenting and unyielding,
Tearing the very flesh of the rock.
Stone screams
Bounce off the face of their aged companions.
The echoes of their anguish,
Heard by even the depths of the sea.
Still it falls.
Fire raining from the sky,
Blazing a trail down the mountain.
The sea is last to bear its scorching light.
Her waves crash upon the shoreline,
Desperate to stem the flow of searing pain.
The creatures beneath her surface
Cower from the heat.
Her foamy arms cradle her children.
Her waves carry the heat away.
In her sparkling depths
They need not feel the sorrow of the once-refreshing rain now brings;
Need not see the carnage the air filled world now faces;
Need not hear the cries of the still echoing stones, begging for mercy that they will at no time receive;
Need not poison themselves on the corrupted wind that rolls by,
Contaminated with toxins they could not digest.
The souls of the natural world retreated farther and farther into the bowels of the earth that soon their once living bodies faded to shells of what had been.
The shadows of their spirit rest still here,
While their living souls glow, safe from the plight of the home we once shared.