Photo: abc.net.au
“We won’t embrace reckless targets and abandon our traditional industries that would risk Australian jobs while having no meaningful impact on the global climate.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Australia has been reluctant to engage climate change as politicians play to captains of industry and look to past glories of trade. Australia has been tardy on carbon emissions treating them with disdain and suspicion. The Prime Minister went on holiday amidst the national fire crisis, was slow to lead on the issue when he finally decided there was a crisis and came home, and though has flown over the sites closest, has not been on the ground very much, deadpanning the fires as a “backdrop to the cricket.” He was slow to deploy military assets. But the critical issue is that he’s not leading.
Perhaps He Prayed
Like a rabbit in the spotlight
he froze, glazed,
dithering and uncertain,
but hey, it’s summer
which is meant to be fun,
so he smiled and said strange words,
warm platitudes he’d heard from others
a generation ago,
all christmassy and matey,
don’t worry mate, she’ll be right,
so he did a little speech
just like the queen
but with no content
wittering on about the Aussie spirit,
and volunteers doing it for free,
then he lolled about with cricket players
and held a dinner party,
but that’s far safer than trying to
find Mallacoota or Batemans Bay
and stand with the widow,
the injured, and the bereft
in the scarred and murdered land,
where we hold solemn farewells
for flora and fauna,
what now your lump of coal
and disdain for wind turbines,
but you just can’t say the words
that really matter.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
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Filed under Country, environment, Free Verse, life, nature, poem, quote
Tagged as 'Perhaps He Prayed', Bushfire, Free Verse, poem, Scott Morrison
