Rural Decay

I heard it on this morning’s news report—
another threat of coming urban blight,
another fear to keep us up at night,
another cloud to adumbrate the light—
how marching souls are leaving home in droves,
their lands devoured by the hand of greed,
their fields now sown with sand and not with seed,
their forests burned beyond the power to bleed,

and swarming cities as a last resort.
Twenty-five million scorched-earth refugees,
displaced from farm and plow and grain and trees.
Yet they are not the only companies
to turn their faces from their native soil
and seek to live upon another’s toil.

© Erica Jeffrey 2008