It can get better

Close Enough to See It, but Not Close Enough to Feel Accountable

The costs are here, the margins rise,

Yet still we turn away our eyes.

What once looked distant, dim, unclear,

Now breathes beside us, close and near.

There is much more to reconsider,

Before the rivers choke and wither.

We need a faith not built on greed,

But ethics rooted deep in need.

The earth, once full of grace and song,

Has carried human weight too long.

Its beauty fades, its voices fade,

Where reckless hands have cut and made.

The forests fall, the land runs dry,

The soil forgets how roots should lie.

The landfills swell, the waters stain,

As factory waste seeps after rain.

The coal plants burn, the chimneys flare,

Their signatures remain in air.

With every fuel and thoughtless plan,

The wound grows stronger under man.

Non-biodegradable things remain,

In crowded dumps and poisoned rain.

What we discard, the earth must keep,

In buried layers, dark and deep.

Not every loss has one clear cause,

Not every death obeys our laws.

Yet climate, waste, disease, and heat

Can make a fragile life retreat.

The Golden Toad, once bright as flame,

Is gone, and absence bears its name.

Its mountain world grew hard to hold,

Too changed, too sick, too dry, too cold.

Sea turtles choke, and seabirds feed

On plastic shaped like human need.

The fish, the frogs, the corals fade,

Where warming waters cast their shade.

The harm is slow, but it remains,

In ocean salt and river veins.

A bottle drifts, a net is spun,

And damage outlives everyone.

Millions of tonnes drift, sink, and stay,

In lakes and seas we throw away.

The rivers carry what we make,

And oceans hold what we forsake.

The glaciers loosen, break, retreat,

Beneath the pressure of our heat.

Even the poles, once far and bright,

Hold plastic traces in their light.

Antarctic snow, its silent shore,

Is not untouched, not anymore.

What looked remote, beyond our blame,

Now carries pieces of our name.

And where the trees once cooled the street,

Concrete rises, storing heat.

The green gives way, the skylines grow,

But daily peace begins to go.

The birds lose songs, the roots lose ground,

The streams lose life without a sound.

The air, the soil, the seas, the sky,

All ask the same unanswered why.

So close enough to see the cost,

Yet far enough to call it lost.

We watch the world become unstable,

But hesitate to feel accountable.

Still, something living can remain,

If conscience learns to speak through pain.

Before the last clean waters fall,

We must feel answerable to all.