Global & Local Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Chernobyl's melt down poisoned Russian air
With half a million hurt, their homes, no-go
In Oshawa, a family hired a lodge,
To hunt and fish by Lake Ontario

The Indian Ocean's murderous tsunami
Rose up one hundred feet into the sky
A quarter of a million lives it took
A lost ice cream in Troon made a child cry

Vesuvius buried Pompeii with its lava
A city frozen in its pumice pall
Marcus Vorenus broke a sandal strap
While marching to subdue the tribes of Gaul

Hurricane Katrina laid to waste
Acres across America's rich land
The McPhee family in Dunfermline
Watched TV, hired a take-away as planned

An Gorta Mór, great hunger, Ireland's scourge
A million died, a million left that shore
In Essex a fat English county squire
Dined on a dish of pigeon and wild boar

A plane falls from the sky, a man, a bird
It's not our problem, happening elsewhere
Assaulted on all sides from pleas for help
We grow inured to it, and cease to care