Kwust

Have passport.

All the balls are the same colour

Ode to a tree

I could not scream; or run, nor breathe. I felt my lungs collapse. Severed veins, then arteries; severed by a bone-grinding, flesh-tearing, silent bipedal, wearing goggles; wielding his ego in one hand and a snarling in the other.

A flash of blue; light danced - sweet, the butterfly born yesterday signed his sad note of thanks. "Farewell!" "Go safely." Our pulse was one.

My pain was his also, together we carried the code snarlings have forgotten. Well, we served him life, the gift we gave him. But life is cheap today, especially when not snarling.

My roots are older than my years, in my sinews the story of all of Time, parsed in code among us, unacknowledged by the snarling, but humming in the still, dark nights, by day, drowned in dins of snarlings’ flights. Our story is their story. But they have forgotten us.

So nimbly he climbs, kicking metal spikes into my flesh. He marvels at his strength. He feels as tall as ... me.

He reaches out, I press away under his weight and sway. I brace my roots, and spread my arms to the sun ... With barely a moment's quiver...

Biting pain runs my limbs though. The green snake unseen, slithers. Thud! I shudder and the spider on a silk leaps. The snarling stomps the kookaburra's nest and kicks it with contempt. "No feathers or eggs," it yells.

I bow ashamed. Sweet the life it gave upon this patch. And again, the searing pain cut through my existence. Piece by piece, chip by chip. Progress.

We were once a mighty civilisation. Life givers, not life takers bent upon destruction. These snarlings! Once, they too sheltered here. They too gave birth beneath our wings. Side by side, breath for breath. I did no wrong. We did no wrong. We honoured each other, except these snarlings have forgotten.

The story of our ancestors lives on yet. But they! They have forgotten.

These snarlings who nash their teeth, who burrow through dirt, and drive their piles, who strive to keep their little hands clean, just like any of those who nestled here with me, under stars with their little families.

And yet, here we all are. Together. All of us swept up in the reverie of a macabre death spiral. No escape.

I die, but the snarling finds a kind of peace in grinding down my pieces.

He will not cease until all suffer his grinding hell. He will leave until the deed is done. I grip the Earth still lingering in death. But as in life, I am not alone.

Mother Earth, the Sun and stars from where we come they sing in me. I am not forsaken. We are not defeated.

(via Conservation parks are growing, so why are species still declining?)