The journey on foot
Usually takes no longer than ten,
And when the cock crows
And the sunshine hits the holes
Up goes the usual order of men--
But it wouldn’t be in completion
Without the young ones,
Barely four to eight in age;
So they rise with the tin can’s song
As the whole neighbourhood awakes.
And they feast on the nectar of nothing,
And they run outside the door,
And they greet all the other soldiers
Who slept soundly on the floors;
Jeremiah, John, Angel and Michelle;
In broken groups, impossible to tell
Who the rest are, casting shadows amongst the dirt
But better that, than fragile bones upon the Earth.
Because it happens every day, starvation
And it doesn’t stop overnight.
And as poverty had long swept the nation
How else would the little ones fight?
So they carry on, mud beating against their feet
Til’ they arrive at the mountains large
With eager hands to dig.
And John says to Angel,
Before their scavenge began,
That his claws are his salvation,
Tearing through the land.
“No, not the land”, Angel says to he,
“But stars of islands
Of what a vision used to be."
So they talk no more
And hush is heard on the hills,
As the orange bakes their backs into brown
And the oxygen shared runs still.
For it was there and then,
That Angel unearthed a tarnished spring,
And another struck a metal volt.
And it was there and then,
That two children celebrated their pile of gold.
And the rest are stooped low,
The remaining waist deep;
Within the fortress of treasures
Which the Kings and Queens no longer keep.
