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Two by Two There had been signs in the sky and elsewhere For weeks. Too many supermoons, unpredictable Tides, birds flying north, salmon beaching, serious Fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field all, so Folk were told, nothing more than the earth’s iron Core preparing to flip as it apparently has done in The past. A story that went down well for a time But lost all credibility when the equator suddenly Became the new north pole
An amateur astronomer equipped with little more Than a monocular spotted it first an object in the Night sky of considerable proportion and heading Directly for earth. An asteroid perhaps was his first Thought but no this thing whatever it was had lights
Soon it was within clear sight of earth and in the Night sky an object of extraordinary portent. The Faithful fell to their knees whilst a secular world Concerned itself more with the possibility that the Occupants of this huge craft might be hostile
Parking close to the moon it brought a new beauty To the night sky and to the earth below. The air Forces of the world looked up in disbelief, man may Well have walked on the moon but right now a lunar Flyby was totally out of the question. Independence Day was a great movie but that’s all it was, this was Real and more than a little threatening
A new neighbour had arrived settling in next to an Old one. What did it mean and what did it want? A first week past and then a second and in that time A new story broke involving the disappearance of Children and animals. Frantic parents demanded Answers from authorities who had none and knew No more than they. In a little over two weeks the Missing number of children in the UK alone ran Into millions
So occupied were the press and TV with the plight of the children that it was some hours before anyone Noticed that the moon’s bright new companion had Disappeared too. Powerful telescopes trained on the Night sky caught or so it was claimed a final glimpse Of the craft as it left the universe
It took Sandra and Sam’s mum and dad several Hours before they plucked up the courage to phone The police. They had news of their two children News that they knew would be met with incredulity But there it was a note on Twitter that read: When We left church today Noah and his wife were there To meet us. They said there was something wrong With the earth and that we should go with them. We Didn't like to at first but they were so kind and it's like Heaven up here lots of children and animals of every Kind, Chris and Pauline are here too. Noah said he Couldn't take everyone, but that you and daddy Would understand. Noah told us the Ark wasn't a Boat it was a ship
The very notion of children hijacked overnight and From the sky of all places temporarily took centre Stage, over-shadowing any warning by some tyrant Calling himself Noah that a perfectly fine earth was in Jeopardy. Twenty four hours passed peacefully before A violent shuddering underfoot gave fearful resonance To Noah’s words innocently repeated by a little girl Telling of a pressure instability at the earth’s core that Could neither be corrected nor could it be relieved
Earth, home to life for millions of years had taken a Battering from which it could not recover. Too much Had been asked of her, too much had been taken From her. Imbalance was everywhere, stripped of Her trees earth’s natural air conditioning had gone And thus richly polluted air lingered at street level For all to breath. Navigating the seas was to plough Through mountainous waves of waste plastic. Every Scrap of energy there ever was had been sucked Squeezed, hammered, blasted and mined from The bowels of the only home we have all to make More horrors with which to further poison the earth In a wicked cycle of wanton self-destruction
As the day of reckoning drew near aircraft fell from The skies, satellites collided and worldwide telecoms Collapsed. Scientists everywhere now knew the full Measure of man’s folly. A raped earth, poisoned air Filthy fish-dead oceans, signs that anyone politician With a brain should have heeded, could have heeded And put right with time to spare, but too late now for The end was in sight
An end that began with cracks slowly wriggling Their way along city streets, along country lanes Across village greens, into back gardens, school Playgrounds, church halls... An acrid unbreathable Stench added to the polluted air as the doors of Hell swung open heralding the flood of which Noah spoke ‘floods of fire’ he called them, molten Lava belching forth from the belly of a dying planet A flood from which the earth would not recover. A Searing gaseous all consuming flood of fire so totally Complete it would cleanse the universe of mankind Forever. There would be no dove telling of the Receding of the waters, no dove telling of a world Returning to normality, for the earth had finally had Enough and this flood marked the end of everything
A world that couldn’t get enough energy got all the Energy the earth had left in a death-dealing final Scream of rebuke transforming a once thriving Garden of Eden into a man-made lifeless lump of Rock left aimlessly spinning around a dying sun Waiting its turn to become yet another spatial Spectacular in the night sky and in the few hours That remained wise men waited and wondered (no point putting pen to paper now) how long it Might be before:
The End
As lava poured over the earth a scientist closed A research paper knowing that it would never be Read. His final calculations indicating that the Earth or what was left of it would in time acquire A series of rings as surface debris flew off into Space, the greater to the three rings would be Made up entirely of fragments of glass
© Joseph G Dawson Vote for this poem
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