Gaean Karma: a #tankaprose

**Image by** **Susan Cipriano** **from** **Pixabay**

Can you see their sad gaze yet? Can you hear them weep for you, even now?

Smell the aroma of their unseasonal sap. See the darkened hue of their submerged trunks. Listen to the lapping of the water that consumes them. Watch the last flock of birds that will ever call them home migrate for the last time.

They tried to warn you. They begged you, pleaded with you, but you refused to listen. Fallow fields, timber homes and all the uses of their corpses was what you wanted them for.

Now you face the consequences of your own avarice. The greenhouses gases you unleashed have warmed your world. The Climate Change some of you mocked far too often has wrought the ruinous weather that confounds you. As your polar caps swell your seas, you can only watch as the rising water swallows your last trees.

What will you do, now that all you can have of them is their pity?

wind upon water

how our reflection

shimmers away

oh, to have had the will to

sow what we wanted to reap

for COLLEEN’S 2019 WEEKLY #TANKA TUESDAY #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 145 #PHOTOPROMPT