Flourish

By OneKind supporter James Flowerdew

Welcome to Glasgow, delegates.

Here is our Glasgow coat of arms.

See, the bird, the tree, the bell, the fish?

And we have a story to tell about each,

but none that you might already know,

nothing about saints and kings from long ago.

We’ve updated them for contemporary relevance,

so: here is today’s bird that never flew

because habitat change overtook it;

today’s tree that never grew

but burned down in a wildfire instead;

today’s bell that never rang,

because there was no point,

why would you ring an alarm

when we’ve ignored every other warning;

and the fish that never swam, but perished

in oceans swollen by melting ice, crimson with algae,

and turned acidic by our industries’ exhaust fumes.

While you are here please give us a new tale to tell,

about how you solved what we don’t need a saint to fix,

because none of us are saints, after all,

and it really doesn’t take a miracle

to write a story about birds that fly and trees that grow

and fish that swim and bells that ring in celebration,

and a future in which we let the whole world flourish.