Poem: "I suppose it must snow"

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A Christmas tree
Stephen Pain's poem fears the momentum for tackling climate change could be lost in a white Christmas
 

Dear Editor

I suppose it must snow during the climate
change conference, to chill the minds of those
who are talking of global warming, a compromise
on the cards, as the snow flakes line the morning
vista, through a window of white, my glasses covered
I bike the five or six kilometres, skidding and sliding
as cars through brown dirt slush make headway
I cannot tell the difference between the sidewalk
and the verge, cannot make sense of nature and the road
still I persist along this course, hoping that I will make progress
the snow piled up on my blue plastic rain coat, my themo
gloves caked in ice, my form altered, my mind elsewhere
thinking of the island of Tuvalu, the tears of the representative
now a Tsunami of guilt, then the crossroads, the red light
stopping, the snow blankets the horizon, and the sun is hidden
So it is with how we think, out of sight and it is not our plight
we can only smile at the beauty of what could be a snowy Christmas
I suppose it is how we consume our world, turn the environment
into a package, neatly tied in red tape, and to be lost in the past.

Yours

Stephen Pain,
Denmark