A lone cocoon clasps desperately
a semi-wilted drooping branch
of a half-dead wobbly tree
in a vast moribund field
of burnt grass and straggling plants.
The cocoon quakes and cracks.
The probing feelers a blast of acrid air greets.
Its body convulses with indecision:
discard it cosy cocoon, its secure womb?
The pungent air rebukes its birth,
the frying sun, its genesis.
It flaps its pall disfigured wings
with its deformed proboscis to probe
faint nectar scent, first droplets of elixir
from emaciated flowers in the scarred field
tainted by noxious dumps,
treacherous flesh-spitting mines
and dregs of death-belching bombs
- residues of human progress.
A few feeble flaps drain its life sap.
It topples down to the ground
from where it sprung.
Its wings open and close in last gasps
of poisoning, smothering, oxygen-deprived air.
A final tremor of life runs.
Silence follows.
