POLLUTION - ©1996

Water is a powerful thing

That begins its course

 as a mountain stream

Clean and pure,

 it begins its fall

Down mountainsides

so sleek and tall

As a stream it falls

through hill and dale

Cutting a swathe

 down the length of its trail

Full of life in many forms

See the angler wait

with his tin of worms

On it goes

through leafy wood

Where native flowers

 come into bud

Over falls,

 through weirs and eddies

Starting so pure,

ending so muddy

Past fallen trees

 wrecks of cars

Past boxes, tins and

empty jam jars

The flotsam of life of life

 is nowhere better mirrored

Than a walk beside streams

 as they turn into rivers

The river meanders

through village, town and city

Becoming more polluted,

it’s such a pity

That man cannot clean up his act

 but just blunder blindly on

Till the river

 isn’t so much water

 but more pollution

The river becomes an estuary

As it finds the outlet to the sea

The sea dilutes the toxic waste

But it’s still there

for the sea-life to taste

It eventually breaks up

 Sufficiently

As it gets further out to sea

Let’s hope there’s not an oil spill

As pollution is such a bitter pill