Forced Flight Poem by Mary Champion

Our island was small,
lying low in the endless, heaving ocean,
scarcely higher than the waves
that broke on the silver sands of its shores.

New land!
with no reserves of fossil fuel,
laid down over millennia,
as it was in the great landmasses of the continents
and their ancient islands.
There was no black gold,
the cursèd blessing
that has brought us to this.

Our carbon footprint was low.
We lived off the sea,
a few crops and small numbers of livestock.
But as the world warmed
and the oceans grew more acid,
our hauls of fish declined.
And as the melting ice caps and glaciers
raised sea levels,
our tiny island, our home,
began to drown, as more and more
was lost to the ocean.

Finally, the dark day dawned -
the Exodus!
the day we had to leave,
to flee our homeland,
our nurturing, native soil
through countless generations.

With all our worldly goods,
we boarded boats
and left our hearts behind.

They gave us a new place -
safely out of reach of the ocean (for now) .
We never expected them to give us their best,
but this…

it is desolate here -
harsher…
There are no silver sands,
only arid desert.
There is black gold still buried here,
but we are forbidden to use it.

There is little for us to do,
in this soulless refugee camp.
We sit around and swap stories -
telling our children and grandchildren about old times
and the dreadful day we had to flee,
abandoning our hearts
and our beautiful, drowning island.