Icy Hearts
Vancouver, Canada
2019, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
When the Antarctic sheets collapse,
swallowed by the relentless rage
of humanity’s neglect,
will skyscrapers rise
through drowning ghosts
of their own regret,
will children still frolic
as they pay the price
for generations of ruin?
When the frozen polar white
vaporize under careless heat
to disappear within the sea,
will the wildlife survive
to tread across toxic waste
that replaced their homes,
will the heavens think to gift
crystal blue skies and temperate showers
to those who took it for granted?
When the monumental glaciers dip
beneath the weight of a million sins,
When the oceans boil and storm
struggling to breathe,
When the frigid ice on our hearts
decides to completely melt,
will we finally realize
what we have done,
and when our eyes cease to be blinded
by comforting idiocy and ignorant lies,
will we change
to save what we destroyed?
Reflection
My poem, “Icy Hearts” reflect our naive and ignorant attitude towards global warming and climate change. Surrounding the topic of melting ice sheets and polar caps, I wished to convey how everything we take for granted today may not exist tomorrow. Through doing research, I learned of the terrible things that will happen, and are happening at this moment, as the thick layers of ice melt away due to global warming, and I wanted to spread awareness for this cause through the poem by rhetorically asking, “Will everything we love still be there if we don’t take action to protect it?”