The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2022

The Meadow 55 The World Erek Lively World Wrecked—metal mind felled trees, strip mined automation brought ease. Ease came to lethargy on elytra’s wings cobbled stone replaced rolling hills, and the coast. We dried the silvery rills. We burned the world by commodifying hell stone. When the village children ask, from behind their panopticonic home, “Father, mother, what was the world like?” Will they answer, “It seems in memory that the grass was green, fish swam free, cows ate wheat and wandered. Even the pigs and the sheep called the plains and woods home. Chickens laid eggs and walked on their own weary way. Great sweeping woods blanketed the land in shade. Back then metal was beneath the stone and we were not coal choked.”

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