The lady in a white gown
Damien Posterino
Art: © Leah Evans (@leahsevans)
The
lady in
a white gown
has been weeping her
warnings for a while, but we keep
ignoring her icy tears flowing into floods.
See
those sad
drops of hers pooling
under the Aurora Borealis.
Bright lights shine as dress threads
unravel into streams, rivers and oceans.
Her
icy smile
disappearing as
we watch with popcorn.
Our bucket of white delight ebbs
away slowly as if a mirror in her face.
Far
away those
sobs carry on and
they don’t stop howling.
Now they rise and rise around
the moats that surround our castles.
Watch
her sorrow
turn to rages unleashed.
Beach folk washed away like
crabs, disappearing in foamy brine,
their hopes clawing for higher ground.
On ‘The lady in a white gown’
The focus of this poem is on the melting ice caps, posing a visible risk to humanity's existence and the intricate ecology of the planet we live on. The archetypal ‘Mother Nature’ and the melting of the polar ice caps are embodied by ‘the lady in the white gown’. The image invites the reader’s own personal interpretations, but the central extended metaphor laments the incremental horror of the devastation that is being wrought upon ‘her’ and our own complicity as bystanders. The world seems to be watching this unravelling passively like we would a movie at the cinema. Initial warnings by climate scientists are now turning into regular natural and human disasters.
The art accompanying this poem is courtesy of © Leah Evans (@leahsevans).