What porous conscience buried behind your deafened ear,
your pockets filled with wealth amassed from fear?

And I—am I the witness, or the host,
the last to see paradise, yet do the least for most?

I ask what is left of paradise when trees fall.
Who counts the limbs and hears their helpless call?

Do roots remember, all the trees they held in place,
or only developers bent on ruin, animals displaced?

Let me record the sap that slowly hardens my heart,
a cry preserved in bitter amber’s unnatural art.

Do innocent ants discern the loss they cannot name,
Or scatter blind through greed and haughty flame?

Let me measure this unholy absence, line by line.
When will courage speak with a louder sign?

Name the names of these awful deeds observed,
while the ravished earth awaits its justice served.

Thousands of trees fell hard. The crows are silent, still.
The bulldozers move on, obeying greed’s will.

Let us face the Apocalypse, trembling and unmade,
and curse the hands that turned paradise to grave.

My poem opens with a Poe-like shudder and ends with a biblical reckoning—Witness to Paradise Lost, is an unfortunate meditation on my immediate future surroundings; the beach.

What is happening is a bold environmental loss and disaster perpetuated by greedy developers.  The poem moves from intimate observation—ants, sap, crows—to cosmic reflection. I question the cost of inaction and the weight it has on absence. Written as a witness to loss and a confrontation with moral consequences; my inheritance to the future.