Tenth Letter: A Poem

Dear Mr. Prime Minister, and all those it may concern,

My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker and this is my tenth letter to you about the climate crisis. I write a letter every week, and last week I was very happy to receive a reply. It was a simple reply, only acknowledging that I sent a letter and that it was about Climate Change. I understand that you and your staff are busy, but I would have liked a more personal reply. But still, it was really nice to have my letter acknowledged at least.

Writing these letters take up a good deal of my time, but I’ve still managed to write a novel and a screen play and some short stories on the side. I’m usually quite proud of my writing, but one thing I write that I hardly ever share are my poems. I don’t often write poems, and I never share them, so this letter is actually the scariest letter I’ve ever sent because I’m going to share a poem I wrote. I wrote it a while ago, before I started writing these letters, when I was 13. It is about the Climate Crisis, if you had any doubt about it. So to celebrate the tenth letter to be sent to you from me, here it is.

Hell or High Water
By Amelia Penney-Crocker, Written July 30, 2019

They say come hell or high water,
Well I think it’s come,
It’s time now to look around
And see what we’ve done
There’s no turning back time,
There’s no silver bullet,
There’s no magic lever
And you can’t just pull it
There is only me
There is only you,
There are only people
Both the old and the new
They say come hell or high water,
Well I think it came,
I’ve made a sad decision:
Today won’t come again.
There’s no way to have yesterday
Or the day before that,
Today will only come once,
Just think about that
I’m only me,
You’re only you,
But we must come together
And find something to do
They say come hell or high water,
And it has begun,
But we’re not sticking together
Like we ought to have done
There must be a solution
I know it inside,
Remember there is still some time
To turn back the tide
There is only me,
There is only you,
But we must come together
And find something to do.

So there it is. I wrote it a while ago, so you could say it’s a message from a young child. You see now it’s gotten so bad, I’ll even share my carefully guarded poetry in hopes of some action. Well anyway, that’s my tenth letter, and if you missed any, you can check them out at my website, www.ameliapenneycrocker.com.

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

Amelia Penney-Crocker

(Image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)