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The Pond
by reg Wednesday, May 2 2018, 12:26am
international / poetry / post

a natural pond in close proximity
to the slums of Darlo
adjacent to the SCG once thrived,
few aware that the site was once a water catchment and swamp
before it was drained as a sports and show ground

early sydney settlers used it as a tip
tho nothing toxic existed in those days
and so a natural pond with rushes
frogs, tadpoles and dragonflies flourished
as a favourite place of play and adventure for slum kids
that made rudimentary rafts and played pirates on
on the Moore Park pond -- left to its nature through
the middle and later decades of the 20th century

huge figs and other trees surrounded the pond
their buttressed sturdy branches making excellent climbing,
very few televisions or the enslaving digital technologies
of today existed then so kids grew closer to their wild independence,
their abilities honed by wild and playful games in one of inner sydney’s
last vestiges of the natural

i returned recently much older and experienced
to witness its ruin, gone are the frogs, rushes and dragonflies
it had been dredged and concreted a ‘modern’ metal
sculpture set in concrete in the centre of now dead waters,
the shore all bricked and concreted
nice, neat and anal to the extreme

lost is the vibrancy of natural life -- the scene devoid of playing children

fear, the ‘modern’ and anal, grip our cities today --
kids deprived of real play, adventure and natural learning play with
enslaving digital devices, shaping their brains to accept slavery
in modern sterile cities as a manageable, expendable, drone
labour force --
modern cities now stand witness to the soul-less
living dead

yet the wild survives deep in the psyches of men
that plan wars and wanton destruction not appreciating
that the destruction of civilisations becomes the victory
of nature, which has no problem dealing with (modern) man’s
poisonous nature, which always succumbs to the subtle victories
of the natural tho hidden and deep within

so wage your wars, fools, and destroy your diseased civilisations,
the now tamed majority offers no resistance, their complacency
verifying yet again that nature remains victorious over all
-- what drives perversity to suicide?

perverse man has failed to appreciate the seeds of its own destruction which
nature implanted long before humans existed

humans are and remain forever powerless before its awe
and persistent harmony

so, do your destructive best, you tragic, pathetic
losers