On Ageing Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The years have fluttered off like moths
The moonlight casts a sickly glow
My sheets are cold as winding cloths

I'm like a scarecrow grey and wan
Watched many seasons come and go
I wake surprised to see the dawn

And all around is so changed
Now I walk tentative and slow
The climate curdles, grows deranged

People are now attached to phones
It is the winter of the crow
Skies fill with predatory drones

Forests are felled, mile after mile
Once they were home to bird and doe
Mankind is driven to defile

The very air, once rarefied
Is rank, where noxious gases grow
Ice caps and habitats destroyed

Seas, choked with plastic turn malign
Destroying cyclones wheel and blow
While governments ignore each sign?

Soon earth itself may be a ghost
Into oblivion, gone tiptoe
All native beauty squandered, lost

Across the world wars suppurate
Whole populations, aimless, go
The victims of the Gods of hate

I have grandchildren. Will their fate
Be compromised, a cruel cost?
Will intervention come too late?

Soon, I'll be dust, part of the dew
Of this small planet, tempest tossed
Oh Earth, what have we done to you?