Lynette Wallworth stood up and spoke to the gathered elite in Davos.
Outside, the Swiss snow softened while at home ash rained
its sombre descent on the scorched earth (not yet official Government policy).
Lynette’s voice, lucid, leaden in gravitas and intent,
did not cut through to the flat-earthers but only those who relished the shocks.
She’s like crystal, thought Angela Merkel, so deliciously shattering.
Lynette, one of 100 leading global thinkers, wonders whether
the ephemera of thought will force the paradigm shift
the Prince of Wales implored with crystalline eloquence. Such a pity
royal decrees are fossilised, she thinks, democracy is all well in theory
but to get anything done properly requires absolutism. Stop!
This thought cannot crystallise! Donald with life tenure?
Instead, she creates a virtual reality of the new angel of death:
We have seen the unfolding wings of climate change and we need
leaders for this moment. She thinks of Greta (the girl was a natural),
and Uncle Nyarri who had never even heard a crystal radio
when the atomic blast was the spirit of his country that rose
up to speak while the water holes boiled and black mist
dotted the songlines through Maralinga, place of thunder.
Their voices will be heard now, thinks Lynette, they are the leaders
for the new reality of black swans, tipping points and feedback loops.
Donald notices that Lynette has not mentioned him. At. All.
He tweets this Wallworth woman’s opinion is worthless:
she is a perennial prophet of the apocalypse like Greta. Besides,
his fortune teller’s crystal ball has predicted that Ivanka
will succeed in 2024. I am committed, Donald tells the elite,
to conserving the majesty of God’s creation.

Kate Lumley

Note: Australian virtual reality filmmaker Lynette Wallworth received a Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2020. Crystal awards celebrate the achievements of artists whose leadership inspires inclusive and sustainable change.

 

Kate Lumley’s poetry and prose has been published in Studio, The Mozzie, Else Journal, and anthologies including Australian Love Poems 2013 (Inkerman & Blunt 2013); Prayers of a Secular World (Inkerman & Blunt 2016); To End All Wars (Puncher & Wattmann 2018); Avant la lettre (Mihaela Cristescu ed., 2020); From the Embers (Black Quill Press 2020); Australian Poetry Collection (Meuse Press 2020); Nine Thousand Miles (Mihaela Cristescu ed., 2021); and a chapbook, View from the Bridge (SMSA, 2018).

© 2021