Monster in my Meadow
Chino Hills, CA
2024, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Siren voices jolt me
As I open my eyes to an angry sky
Streaked with crimson and cadmium light
In my red plaid pajamas and bare feet
I stumble into the furious dawn
My speckled concrete patio needles my feet
As my family huddles like moths watching a flame
Listening to our fir trees popping like firecrackers
That light the sky in a blur of fatal flowers
My wailing meadow spills from my home
Ablaze in light as the fatal fire roars
In the shed, our cows are lowing
They don’t know why our once placid meadow
Is now a carpet of angry flames
My lush bushes which once were green castles in which to hide
Now lay in charred ruins
And the knee-high grass I once flew over as a fairy
Is but cinder in the wind
My meadow whimpers as we gape gasping
And the numbing shock of fire slaps me with fists of angry wind
How quickly serenity turns to ash
The scarlet monster on the hill roars
Belching smoke so thick we choke
Mom tugs my arm
Let’s go
Predator has become prey
We think we dominate Nature
Only to have it chew us
Who truly is Master?
For when man extinguishes himself
It will be Nature who flourishes in the end
Are we the only species who makes such foolish choices
To herald our own demise?
As we turn our backs to flee
The monster licks us
And we climb into our metal beast
The one that puffs greenhouse gas into the air
We are the cause of our own demise
Reflection
Reflection
My creative process was inspired by the traumatizing scene of my meadow, home to my cows, burning. It was an image a little girl tried to push down and forget. I will not fail to remember the day I left my home, not knowing whether or not it would still be there when I came back. However, as I look back, I realize it is important to address the rising issue of climate change. Yet the issue only leads back to one source, us. The blind little girl I once was, believed that the “monster on my hill” was nothing more than the result of a spark, but it wasn’t. It was the result of human activity, slowly eating Earth inside out, clawing at its core. A message to my viewers: Everything we do that harms nature will eventually come back to us. In the future, I hope to find alternatives for resources such as plastic, wood and fossil fuels. I will continue to spread awareness about climate change before it is too late.