Tough Love

By her violent hurricanes and the ice caps’ thaw,
by the massive flooding and the hungry maw
of fires burning cruelly, devouring trees and houses,
she tries to rid the human race of habits it espouses.
Mother Nature’s angry and she’s tried to let us know,
but still we do not listen, for we are rather slow.
We’ve been such naughty children, not picking up our toys.
Perhaps we’ll get the message from new tactics she deploys.

From Wuhan to Limerick, we’re forced to stay inside,
reading the statistics of how many more have died.
She takes away our playthings: airplanes and sailing ships,
closes all our restaurants, taking away our tips.
She shuts down all the factories, cleaning up the air
so we could breathe again outside, if only we could dare.
Hunkered down inside our homes, we try to find diversions.
No NBA games, but fewer temperature inversions.

We do not flood the roadways, tossing out our trash.
We avoid bars and restaurants, hoarding all our cash.
Give up all the driving—the freeway’s frantic rush,
avoiding the container stores and the mall’s mad crush.
With Amazon delivering only vital things,
we resurrect the pleasures that tradition brings.
Monopoly, Parcheesi, Pick-up-sticks and Rook.
Brother builds a model plane. Sis picks up a book.

Mom recycles plastic and refuses to buy more.
All excessive packaging piles up in every store
until they learn that they can go back to what once was
and rid the world of garbage, doing it because
we do not own the world you see. Instead, the world owns us.
We are just the part of it creating all the fuss.
Maybe if we clean our rooms, our mom will let us play
outside again with others, one unpolluted day.

For RDP: Tough