Save Mother! Poem by tolu ogundare

She, so friable now has become
from exhausted tries to
wriggle free
from the embrace of death,
while we, her
children - with our fancy straws of
modernity, sip her dry
of wealth.

By the stealth of a
night thief - dark,
silent, still; her end too
soon approaches...

Her skin of earth
washes away for we set
her hair of green
carelessly on fire.
Tell children mother is
dying! Doctors said
her health is waning.

The meteoric signs of
her mummed
discomfort written in
the pages of climatic
unrests
are here staring us in
the face at the
unwelcomed arrival of
emerging symptoms.

Her air smells of black
smother that exhales
from smoking pipes
of vehicles and
factories as acid-laden
rain finds for itself a
chemical lab of
enabling reagents.

From our thoughtless
romance with science
spring forth gaseous
missiles of skyward
brutal momentum,
ceaselessly maiming
mother's cosmic roof.
Rendering now her
tender frame
defenceless to Solar's
blazing tongues: her
fever worsens; her
temperature climbing
taller, nearing the
sun's...

Tell children!
May we halt our gain
in pace lest we lose
mother sooner than
her end approaches.