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Yesterday??

Two days ago, Yesterday was Tomorrow.
As Tomorrow never comes,
Did Yesterday ever happen,
And if it did, what went on then?

Daphne and Ethelred came back,
Both cats healthy and happy,
Cured of the cancers that killed them.

I walked several kilometres along the route of a planned tramline
Photographing the thick growth of trees in the median,
Wheelchair abandoned at home
Then walked back photographing a devastated wilderness
With short lengths of rails set in concrete.

The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Maeve Clark,
For her definitive history of the Peoples’ Republic of South Bandicoot
Which seceded from Australia when the only access road was cut by rain,
Overcoming the insuperable handicap of the book’s unpublished nature.*

In test cricket, Afghanistan thumped India by an innings and plenty
And Ireland beat England by even more.

While in the reality of Today,
A few dot points:

• The rich get richer,
  Which they claim is to the benefit of society,
  While the poor get poorer,
  Which is their own fault.
• The monsters in the moat around Parliament House
  Feast on factional discards
  Unceremoniously let go by the latest party leader.
• The construction of new coal-fired power stations
  Is a considered plan to rationalise our diversity of species
  Into the hardened few that will enjoy life on Venus.
• Now that migrant countries no longer want migrants
  And tell them to go back where they came from,
  There are moves to make sending back retrospective,
  Going back at least two hundred years
  Preferably seventy thousand,
  So one rift valley in Africa
  Becomes a cosy habitat for nine billion happy campers.

It’s really all in the mind,
So do I grit my teeth and face the present,
Or do I retire exhausted from the good fight
And ostrichlike dig my head in the sand,
Saying I like it as it was Yesterday?

* Warning: A blatant piece of self-promotion.

Copyright © D.W. Walker, 2018

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