This Poems is a Conflict of Earth and Water

This poem is a conflict, between two 

who should be allies, you’d think –

two who need to live together 

in mutual support, in symbiosis, 

in give and take, ebb and flow, 

in response, adaptation … in balance.

This poem is a conflict between the two.

This poem is earth silting over,

piling up, drying out, earth

being shovelled, rearranged

by hands and machines,

becoming inhospitable to water.

It is earth discharging its garbage –

being made to discharge its garbage –

to crowd and infect water. This poem 

is earth in conflict with water.

This poem is water overflowing –

overflowing the sky in enormous rains;

overflowing the seabed which can

no longer contain it, to bash at the shore

and overwhelm the shore; overflowing

the rivers and streams with violent roaring

to crash over fields, against bridges,

through houses, to inundate the earth …

to change the earth, and the lives

of all those who live on the earth.

This poem is water in conflict with earth.

This poems is a conflict of earth and water.

In fact it is many such conflicts. Some

are the vagaries of Nature, or so we’d

like to think. Some of us like to think them

acts of God. But most are caused by the acts 

of the human race, which depends

on the integrity of earth and water, the way

they act with each other, react with each other.

This poem is the conflict of earth and water,

very much brought about by the conflict

of humanity with its surroundings, its basis, 

its vital support, its only home. This poem is 

a conflict, deadly for us who need earth and water.

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write about two things fighting which seem unlikely to fight. The Poem A Day prompt is to write 'an earth poem' (today being Earth Day). 

This is written in the Boomerang Metaphors form invented by Hannah Gosselin. (I also decided, for the heck of it, to increase each verse by two lines – escalating the conflict, perhaps.)