The Copenhagen Accord

William Loader

The skies mourn. The clouds darken.
Angry winds stir the leaves and shake the trees.
Distant voices speaking from future generations cry, "Why?
Why could you not agree? Why could you not find a way?
Did you not see the ice melting?
Did you not calculate the disaster of disappearing glaciers,
drying up the springs which brought life to millions?
Could you not see the desperate migrations, legal and illegal,
as people fled as refugees, not from politicians,
but from their sunken or scorched lands?
Why did you listen so hard to those bent only on their short term profits
and those who denied what all could see?"

The dying species have no voice.
Landscapes seared by fire lie silent.
Islands turn to sand.
Youth who once hoped despair
seeking a virtual world of fantasy or suicide.

What life can spring from the failure of promised crops?
What hope from charred remains and trampled aspirations?
Reporters, dancing their dances of cynicism,
to out-do one another with self-indulgent moralisms,
entertaining the appetite for negativity, which is their wont,
compound the confusion, which their inept reporting helped create
and we are left wondering if those future voices have it right.

Charred ground, however, has its own genius.
Stubborn roots assert accords if scarcely formed
and inspire dry seeds to sprout.
Scattered species have found some common space;
a garden is possible, visible in its fragile beginnings.
The unfamiliar have become more familiar,
the untrusted have become more trusted.
There is something to nurture here,
that needs rain and hope
not cynicism and despair.

How mean will the gardeners be?
The voices of the children cry out for their garden
to be allowed to grow and flourish,
to be tended with care and urgency.
Their garden is our planet,
and we the ones who can sustain it
or bring its death.
Let Copenhagen's frail shoots
find the support they need and bear fruit
Then will our children sing
and we shall have rediscovered our humanity.