Winter of Despair

It's a bitter winter of despair
Dark, black clouds hug the horizon
Great, grey waves crash the battered beaches
churning up detritus;
man's trash, coughed up by nature
and spit out upon the shores

Tar-covered carcases smear the pebbles
where happy, little children used to run
naked and innocent
not knowing their presence blighted
the sand where they gathered shells
in their sweet, poisonous little hands

The sound of oil rigs thump in the distance
day and night
like the beat of a distressed heart

Pumping, pumping, pumping
earth's blood out onto the spoiled land

Far off in the desert a woman squints up
at the blazing sun in the sky

She hears the thunder of bombers
over the steady thump, thump, thump
of oil rigs on the land her ancesters
crossed slowly on desert ships;
living satisfied for thousandes of years
without the black wells of blood
for which so many will soon die