Encroachment Poems | Examples

Roots - For Alex Haley

Pensile clouds of a new Truth loom.
With them are selected versions of
Extinct grief.

Looking through the yellowness of a
Dog’s eyes, this aura of Truth, pervasive,
Sours my palate.

What say the bulletins and tabloids
In their speech potency?

Have they recoiled on the sudden encroachment
Of stale seas
Or have they rolled out drums for Haley’s ROOTS?

Between Kamby Bolongo of watery essence
And the forested, warm plains of Juffure, ROOTS!

And drums fashion themselves out for Kinte,
Who must tap gently the face of the drum
For earthly summons.

From sinuous, valleysome frontiers backward,
We yodel loud,
Fronting bands of ROOTS.

Songs of The Spoon-billed Sandpiper No 15: ABBA

They'd wade at standards to be seen by most.
The Spoon-billed Sandpiper, who shares wading,
to dying, one hundred ten, and counting.
Stretched East Asia, Russia through China ... host.
They've spoon-shaped bills to help them scoop up moss,
insects, shrimp, and worms. They are renowned for
their calls, which males fly and sing a rapport,
sounds like 'preep' and 'wheer' can stretch it across.
Human encroachment on their feeding and
breeding wetlands threatens their survival.
Predators plague their nest a revival,
two decades, numbers dropped by two thousand.
The ascension for most and few still greens,
a descension of value bows night scenes.

A Beautiful Soul

Your beauty
            does not need to wear a skimpy bikini
            or hide behind a painted mask of vanity
Your beauty
           may push against the edges of the mold
           but that is a mold, cold men created blindly
Your beauty
           does not yield to the encroachment of time
           but transforms to embrace reality
Your beauty
           is in a smile with crooked lips
           the tears shed to offer others sympathy
Your beauty
           is in arms outstretched for a hug
           and in a heart filled with dignity
Your beauty
           reads my words before they are written
           it inspires my hopes, dreams, and poetry

When I Died

When i died, hush bequeathed the Scrabble Board
The once weighty tomes floated off cramped shelves
Whilst married letters argued midst themselves
Phonics quivered sans the vowel adored

O' warm vowel with the prominent dot
Disarrayed lost words bowed their heads and cried
On that sonant solemn day when i died
Shrouding the dot with a forget-me-not

Ill-fated, O' How could i bear such strain
Replaced without heart in a scrabble game
From die to dye, opponents scored higher
Of y's bold encroachment on i's domain

And when i died in Craig, one must exclaim
Replaced by a y, does it create Ire?


Date: 11/04/23
I died poetry contest
Sponsor: Craig Cornish

A Lonely Town

Workers in the rice fields,
Labourers on agrarian land,
They move in rows and columns,
They work assiduously until they are spent,
Until twilight wears its garment over the region.

It's the golden season, 
The season that precedes the dry,
It’s a season when the land yields bountifully,
The land births a teeming population,
Nature has smiled over the fields.

They gather their harvest in silos and local shelters,
There’s enough for the home and market,
Then comes the annual festival,
They sing songs in their indigenous dialect,
They come out in colourful attire, 
They extol Nature for his kind and merciful acts.

The town is a shadow of itself,
It sits in forlorn hope,
A lonely wind sweeps through its streets,
The fields have become a haven for birds and unseen creatures,
Land dispute, encroachment and trampled rights, 
These threesomes have stripped the land of its beauty,
They have pushed the town down the cliff.



November 8, 2022.
2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 22 Poetry Contest,
Mark Toney.

Unearthly Atmosphere

A charm of finches flew in circles
disappearing entirely into surreal mist
that now camouflaged the field.
It seethed around rows of trees
until all was invisible:
Silence reigned,
supernatural eerie feeling
took over my thoughts.
Fog's gradual encroachment
over hills and cliffs:
Swirling unearthly atmosphere.
I felt distressed.
My heart beat erratically,
hours of inexplicable mystery
shadows vanished as mist thickened.
I trembled with an unnamed fear.

The finches flew to safer gardens.
Screeching gulls took their place.
Across bay fog horns sounded,
as confounded boats lost direction.
Echoes resounded throughout paranormal night.
Breaking dawn witnessed sea change.

Soon I awakened from my stupor.
Like curtain rising mist dissipated,
leaving memories of that uneasy time. 



Pixabay image by: ArtTower

The Brown Bear

The brown bear


During Yeltsin years when he sold Russia down the river
People in the west loved the brown bear
we patronized the Russian as vodka swilling village idiots.
The cuddly bear died, and a steely-eyed fox to the helm
and the Russians was no longer cuddly.
The Russian federation was no longer willing to play
the game ascribed by the western press no longer willing
to be pushed around and laughed at.
Putin, the fox, turned Russia into a modern state that has
a modern army that is powerful if stirred by the west.
Russia wants peace but does not like the encroachment 
by NATO/US, that is like Indians in western movies
encircling the wagons.
Putin, president of Russia, vilified by the western media
 and the EU, ain’t forgiving
even the capitalists know this and stalk carefully.

Where the Seagulls Nest

The waves rolling in crash against barren rocks
Where seagulls nest in the stark narrow crevices,
Their sharp squawking cries are heard for miles
Warding off the encroachment of large raptors
Which swoop down and threaten the fledglings,
While the smashing surf mutes their angry cries.
Time has honored the integrity of the boulders
Against the sea, nature’s fortresses, separating
The lower sea water from the high chalky cliffs
Nature, too, protects the stronger of the gulls
That will one day soar high above the whitecaps
And forage along the isolated shell-rich beaches
Only to return in spring to the shallow fissures,
Their birthplaces, to lay their eggs high above
The persistent pounding of the breakers below.

FIRST PLACE WINNER
written June 17, 2021
Brian Strand's "All Yours" Poetry Contest

Indus River Dolphins

Indus River Dolphins are listed as, endangered
and are only found in the lower parts of Indus River, Pakistan
They are believed to have originated, in the ancient Tethys Sea
when it dried up, about 50 million years ago, an antient discovery

They are one of four, river dolphin species and sub-species
and they spend all their lives, in fresh water rivers
They use echolocation to navigate, hunt and communicate 
as they’re functionally blind, and adapted to muddy waters

Numbers have declined, because of human encroachment
destroying their habitat, with all this human development
building dams and barrages, that degrades their migration
and other threats are, bycatch, poaching and pollution

Black-Footed Ferrets

Black-Footed Ferrets are listed as, endangered
and are the most endangered mammals, in Northern America
They inhabit the grasslands of, the Northern Great Plains
and are the only ferret species, native to Americas colonies

Native American tribes, landowners, conservation and organizations 
have given the black-footed ferrets, a second chance for survival
but habitat loss from, human density encroachment developments
and ongoing plagues and diseases, only decreases their revival

Mother

Voice of Mother Nature
From the centuries 
My time was under pain 
By the evolution of researchers, scientists 
Revolution of industrializations 
Diggers ploughs wounding in my chest
Encroachment from my womb
Fossil fuel, coal, sand, stone, river banks, rivers, forest etc;
In the name of industrialization and human settlements
For the benefits of human being 
Due to this I was suffered a lot 
I feel my children’s suffered more than me

Now I feel relief some extent for a short period 
Today my children’s are praising my status
At present sky is clear, air quality is better to breath
I feel proud my children’s are aware on their health and future generation
I am not different than your mother
I am Mother’s nature
By nature I am kind and cruel
You must have experienced pandemic in the past and now
Please understand my capacity and follow my advices 
Important is your mother’s health and yours not wealth.

01st May 2020

A Secret World

Along a country road,
beyond the guard rail,
past the visible vines,
lurks an ancient jungle.
Most who travel pass
don’t have an inkling of
the depth of the danger—
this cliff so close by,
this mystery in their midst.

The steep-slanting ground
and lush vegetation
in quintessential green
drop, and drop again
to a long-forgotten brook
that one can only hear--
though perhaps by peering,
one can glimpse refracted light
sparkling from its surface.

After blithely flowing
through this lost world
of twisted roots and tree trunks,
the creek quickly merges
with the Quaboag River,
and, coming into normalcy, 
loses some allure.

Another mystery calls from
this roughly hewn valley
(gouged out by ice sheets
and still too severe
for human encroachment).
More resonant than the birds
and deeper than the stream,
it registers in a region
somewhere in the soul.

Taking one by surprise,
this precarious paradise
suddenly feels familiar,
as though we’d been there once,
as though we all belonged there,
long, long ago, 
before the last ice age,
in some primal place
before mills and industry,
before roads and rails.

Playing With Fire

Fire does seem to be
Nature’s Remedy
for much it deems
out of control:
Cleaning the forest
of weeds
with human 
encroachment;
as God prospers
His Germs—making
ready for kindling
the multitude of
discarded souls….

I light a match…
watch it burn...
feeling a small
god of sorts;
entranced by
its beauty
and the power
of flame--
wondering where
one starts
and the other begins
or if, perhaps, all
is circular, and smoke
and ashes the surface
of well-rounded green?

Ouch! There must be
a better way….

A Season of Indigence

A SEASON OF INDIGENCE

This drought and curse
Of hand to mouth;
An unrepentant encroachment of pauperism
Impregnating our back country
Discern,
Our bigwigs in back country
Stand aloof
While,
Season after season
Millions of Pickneys
Flourish with kwashiokor
I,
A son of the soil,
A citizen of the world
Peruse no light
At the end of the tunnel 
Jet age swarmed us with gusto,
An age when birds
Learned to flutter incessantly 
Criss crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans 
Ushering in a pretence
In social change
Only to abscond
With it's tail between it's legs
Information age,
Just stirred from it's slumber
It's lazy eyes struggling to adjust
To our flickering fluorescent 
Hard drive here....flash drive there.....
Mouse click left....mouse click right....
Still,
I see no light
At the end of the tunnel
Robots are now delegating affairs
Our barns are empty
Our children famished
Poverty is now an opium of humanity
Alas,
Third trimester of harbor, now in labor,
The Surgeon's predigious epidural hype
Adjudged below the belt, still born!

Larry's Cove

Grass growth in the cove
			 where Larry's boat sat 
			 years after Larry’s ash
			 whirled with rocks in space
			 daunts the pickerel:
			 silently galloping glut
			 challenges the channel.
			 Someday soon there may be
			 no seeing through it
			 to the bottom of things.
				
			 This soft encroachment,
			 a green disease born
			 of fertilized lawns
			 and hangers on
			 from other lakes brought
			 here by alien crafts
			 may arrest fluidity
			 with an embodiment
			 as solid as a moral
			 but as dead as Monday’s church.

			 Will we hear the hard lake 
			 crack or will that be 
			 Larry’s heart? Fossils 
			 Gouged from cliff sides
			 and PA road cuts
			 taught the geologist
			 that all things will pass.
			 But the lover of Maine
			 rain-gauged statistics
			 to say, “Not so fast!
			 “Slow down! Not so fast.”

			 Take heart Larry, and I
			 will strive to join you:
			 your great-grandson
			 Parker loves the land
			 you left for all of us. 
			 He is diving into things
			 and spying out hydrilla
			 with a water glass.

• Short Encroachment Poems
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