Utopia

This is the year I wasn’t sure would come

Each day serves as a timer,

Our Earth is dying

Its creatures kneel down, not so peacefully, along with it

There's empty fields where thick bark once stood.

This is the year children wonder,

If their own life span depends not on their choices,

but the ones made decades ago by their grandparents.

Plastic clogs the Earth’s pores like dirt,

dirt too deep to dig out.

This is the year Brazilian forests disappear permanently,

Amazons once prayed to,

now used for frivolous wants.

Dying planet,

Dying species,

more and more everyday.

Golden toad, black rhino, Spix’s Macaw,

These names are unheard of,

and will never be heard again.

This is the year we realize,

we can look past vanity and see,

politics and business

mean nothing with no land to inhabit.

How can we argue over undeniable facts?

Our home’s lifespan is cut short,

as if it’s been a lifelong smoker,

due to industry and pipes,

one could say it has.

This is the year we educate,

we learn what can be done.

Not all animals are gone,

not every forest has been eating by machines,

the arctic ice may freeze again,

only if we decide we care.

This is the year we promote growth,

we let the trees saw the buildings down,

we let the flowers bulldoze brick,

we let animals tame humans.

This is the year that we decide,

we care more about the survival of a species,

than the sick human satisfaction of their murder.

We decide that we care,

more about the vitality of our one planet,

than the organizations that control it.

We decide that if they won’t listen,

we will just scream louder.

This is the year humans use our gift,

the gift of empathy, so rare it seems.

Let it rain down and water the empty lands,

and let it shine through,

to provide warmth for the creatures.

If each business has meetings,

about the meaning of a beating heart,

no matter what its inside,

and the power of mother nature,

in all her angst and anger,

Then this is the year.