And now the meadow’s black, burnt

to a cinders that will not

see the ball or the glitz and glamour

of the magazine, the photographer

squeezing out one more frame,

one more plea of pout baby, look

down the lens and think of England

as you smoulder and create electricity,

the meadow is black, corrupt, shameful,

shameless, the meadow primed for real

estate development to sell more dreams

of home ownership, till the banks come knocking

at the door, rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat, economy

to scale, a large slug festering, dripping coins

out of its corpulent back side and wiping

delicately the end result away

with a plastic credit card and the swoosh

of distilled bottled water cleaning the

remaining residue away…

the meadow is black, burnt, scraped away

in the need to make a profit,

machines toil till they drop

and then carted away, ceremony and grief

little interest as the field next door

is lit by some arsonist in the dead of night.

 

Ian D. Hall 2018