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What Have You Done, Toronto?

2/18/2018

1 Comment

 
PEGI EYERS   
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"Gardens Manufactured" by Cheryl Molnar
Already millions of acres of farmland surrounding the Greater Toronto area have succumbed to development in recent years, in Ontario's (so-called) protected Greenbelt zone.  For those who can afford it, the demand is desperate for traditional detached family homes and townhouses.  The building boom is continuing to explode as the population of Toronto is projected to hit 13.5 million by 2041.  As the last great resource colony on the planet, Canada remains open to millions of immigrants from all over the world, and once an ecosystem is razed it is gone forever. 
​

What Have You Done, Toronto?
Building Up, Going Down

​
First
The farmhouses start
To look abandoned
Boarded up
Rundown grey ~
Then the fields go fallow
 
Farmers dead, gone, sold out
 
Then

The signs go up
            “For Sale”
            “Project By”
            “Chief Engineer”
Oligarchy buys in
Planes in a bleached sky
Terminus at Pearson
 
Next

The land is denuded
Creatures of the forest
Annihilated
Cracked branch
Trunks stacked high
Sawdust flows

Earth Pain
Earth Sorrow
 
ECOCIDE
Broken bones of the land
24 hours a day 7 days a week
My dear friends
​The great trees

Life-long sentinels
I SEE YOU
(Good-bye)
 
Destroyed in broad daylight
Hide this from my vision
Or I too may surely die
 
Next   

The machines arrive
Giant earth movers
Believe it or not
Settler fields are a cut above
These great mounds
Artificial hillocks
Geo-engineering
 
Then

Black tarps
Snaking around
Building to code
Partitioning the living
Yet you know
their days are numbered
Whatever is left
of Earth Community
 
Is colonized, maintained and controlled
 
Now

The land stripped and raped
Exposed,
Gone forever
Waiting for the final blow
 
A year or two may pass
 
Then

The grid arrives
Construction requires
Streets fencing bricks
Wires hardware tunnels
Hard hearts hard hats
The gated community
 
Wut

Planting shrubs
where once were forests
Homes clogged side-by-side
Or a high-rise crane
Mega-build
Digging cavities
Deep in the Mother
 
Boxes in the sky!
Here comes the insanity
            The allergies
            The depression
            Calls to the shrink
            Screams in the night
            Erectile dysfunction
 
The elevator that stops at extinct
 
Bringing home more crap
Looks great in the store
But not in your apartment
Fantasies stacked high
Enough rubble to fill Lake Ontario
 
A hell’s brew of
Metal, glass, glue, ceramic
Plastics made in China
 
What have you done, Toronto?
You set it in motion
 
NATURE IS LIFE

You chopped that down
 
NATURE IS LAW

Here come the fires, the floods and the hurricanes

NATURE IS LOVE
You impaled your own soul
 
Earth’s sorrow and Earth’s joy
> As above so below <
​




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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for neurodecolonization, social justice, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon.com 
www.stonecirclepress.com




1 Comment
Rita Gonzales
2/18/2018 06:35:34 pm

this breaks my heart. to see the best land in canada fall to city development.

Reply



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