Arlene Corwin writes

New Year’s Day 2020

While Nintendo tends to games that train,

Australia burns.

Koala bears and kangaroos, the populace

Lose loves and lives: Apocalypse.

We sit and watch the TV news,

Last night’s champagne obscurely active,

We alive, not losing home and life, the fact is,

There can never be

                               equality,

Wins and loss an unmoved boss.

While year becomes a twenty-twenty,

Eyesight lags behind and we see worse than ever, 

We, the cognoscenti severed from reality.

I, one of the ‘cognoscenti’ weak in kindness,

Strong in ignorance, probably a hubris too.

Goodness me,

To see the goodness and receive, retrieve it,

That’s the trick.

A slick and sick society,

We cheat and lie

To satisfy self-serving need, 

Feed vanity’s rapacious greed; 

A lie which grieves the planet as we watch it die 

While I write futile poetry and pry 

This New Year twenty twenty.