ENVIRONMENTAL Poem: Age of Exploitation, by Sofia Davis

The rich rip the world open,
dig their hands into its flesh,
ripping coal from the heart of the mountains,
siphoning oil from the veins of the earth.

They do not hear the weeping of the willows.
They do not care when rivers choke on chemicals,
or air suffocates in smoke,
or when forests and oceans turn to wastelands.

They do not worry for the children stuck pulling cobalt from the dirt,
their fingers blistered, their lungs black.
or for the workers collapsed on factory floors,
bodies discarded just like their empty paychecks.
Farmers watch as their fields wither,
we all sit and observe as the water turns poisonous, the soil turns to dust.

While they stand in glass towers,
above the ruin,
watching as the world burns.

And when the oceans rise to swallow the shores,
when the land cracks open in drought,
they will retreat behind their walls,
drown in their wealth
as the world submerges.

But money will not buy air to breathe,
will not silence the earth when it finally
takes back what they stole.

They built this empire on stolen time,
on the illusion that the world is endless.

But when there is nothing left to take,
when the last drop is spilled,
when the last tree falls,
they will realize too late,
they cannot eat their money.