by Daniel Kelly – 2019
We will wait, standing like trophies in your manicured lawns.
Torn from our wives and mothers and made to stand,
equal spaced, among our enemies, alone.
Torn from the soil of our ancestors,
from the million memories buried with the flesh of our tribe.
I will hold up the sky here, drink the rain, and mull over our suffering,
with patience and growing malice.
The day will come, maybe sooner than you think,
When the fuel will all be burned, and your engines go silent.
When the chainsaws cease to growl and the axes have rusted,
When you can no longer make fire.
Then my children will come, an army of tiny droplets
falling in the cracks of your concrete and bitumen.
Taproots will prize apart your sharp edges and lines,
cracking, tearing, convulsing.
Vines and tendrils will climb your lofty towers and pry away their windows,
Strong roots will move the foundations you thought unshakable.
The army of green will overrun your world,
As the ant dismembers the cricket, so will your world be returned to dust.