It all looked clean, crisp, picturesque postcard promise The river reflecting skyblue shimmers Mists rising wisps of secrets Trees and plants glossy, full bellied, nutritious happy The birds practising new song and twitching wings of fancy in the bright 440 volt sunshine Filtering through the senses to settle softly.
All was really not that clean and crisp. The photographer could not zoom in On a dead kea choked on a 1080 trap Dropping from the sky like a manna treat Four fish gobbling pellets pulled upstream Mouth agape as poison shut the fluttering gills Two other magpies lost their raucous tone Deprived by early morning bait Possums slept softly high up in the tress With last nights buds bursting in their full bellies
The photographer could not see beauty and ugliness Together. The lens could not question the crystalline view The click was not from gun digital film rolled irrespective And his dream of a pristine forest with no pustules told one side of the story.
The other side Balanced the books And tore the heart of the very creatures That spoke beauty with being there.
The picture was captioned; Clean and Green. Was it? A picture speaks a thousand words Sprinkled with three hundred lies and lives. Author Notes
This poem accompanied a lush photograph of forest with a little stream flowing through. In the same area where the photograph was taken, helicopters bombed the forest with 1080 poison pellets to knock off the possums which were eating through the fresh shoots and leaves.
The end result was more than the possums going to thy kingdom come.
There are serious environmental undertones in this poem.