Will We Adapt? – My Weekly Poem 4/25/2022

Water sprayed frantically
into the sun and the wind
desperate for emerald carpets
and for climate’s rule to rescind.

The green will invite people
to gather and to play
and, as long as water is pumping,
the expectations will stay.

We expect greener places,
free from dirt and from bugs,
we pay unseen prices,
not feeling nature’s tug.

Tugging toward balance
with a nudge and then a jerk.
Will we decide to adapt
before the world goes berserk?

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This poem was posted for the previous week’s poetry prompt, Earth Day.

The picture above isn’t very inspiring, but it is the place that inspired this poem. This was our campsite in the Western desert of Colorado where the park owners would water everyday so that campers could have a bit of green to look at. They would patrol each day to make sure nobody was piling gear or tromping too hard on it, the poor grass could only stand so much as it tried to survive in the dry, hard-packed soil.

P.S. quite a bit of the Colorado River gets pumped onto the fields in the background to grow grapes for wine. There are livelihoods and commerce involved there so I won’t say more than that.