The Rush of the Tide

The Rush of the Tide

In the heat of a changing planet,
the tidal wave emerges,
then surges,
no ordinary rush in the ocean wide,
a relentless onslaught
of pent up youthful energy
in a world gone mad
in the fumes of a fossil fuel ride

Hanging ten on a sunlit crest
the tide strikes past
then through
the halls, the ivy
they will not be denied,
scraping every vestige
of pervasive rot
from society’s
tough and callous hide

Their vibrant spirit revolting against
the ever growing gloom,
tumbling down, crumbling down
that Wall,
that notorious Street of Doom

The old guard stands determined,
resolutely refusing to yield,
buttressed by the greed of a generation
that stumbled upon the gold
then suddenly lost its zeal
rather placing faith in Mammon,
and the trumpeting clowns that reign,
they bought a ticket to a better world
but somehow missed the train

Come now the young crusaders,
shadows of falling towers
weighing heavily upon their birth
rejecting the profit leeches
that suck the lifeblood
from the scorched and dying earth

Billions of years of evolution
discarded into trashcans
of an uncaring and wasteful age
youth asks “Who shall pay the piper
for this lost legacy,
who shall pay the wage?”

Still hope rises like the Phoenix
in the swell of this youthful tide
a beacon of change in a world gone mad
in the fumes of the fossil fueled ride

Lawrence Wuest is an ecologist and random poet living in the diverse wonders of the Upper Nashwaak on unceded territory of the Wəlastəkwiyik, Mi’kmaq, and Peskotomuhkati.