Going Going Gone by Robert Halleck

It is night, quiet in Pacific Highlands.
We had thought fields and trees would
always be, trees not felled, foxes in dens
but then the big green days died in
mounded ground covered with CATs.
It is night; tomorrow no birds will sing.
Their song blossoms have died—gone
where flowers went. Life retreats as
bleak stores rise, young crowds come
to trade with Joe, bank with the stagecoach
We long for the unspoiled, lose it forever
to greed, garbage, concrete and tires.


Robert Halleck is a member of San Diego's Not Dead Yet Poets.