Not In School Today

After Earth Beat by Paul Weller

Her banner has a planet on, she’s
carrying resistance and insisting that the
government takes action for a new
start for a cleaner, greener future from today.

Her classmates walk beside her, she’s
a part of something wider, it’s a
call to not ignore the warning
signs that draw the lines that

show the bands of drowning lands on
coasts of rising seas as scientists predict a
catastrophic shift if we don’t listen, make some new
decisions, do things differently from yesterday.

They’re not in school today, they’re on the
streets on stomping feet, and they’ll stop the world
if all the future has to offer them is
forests burning, planet turning

into a scorched Earth. She’s
fighting for a rebirth, a solution, a
social revolution, a new
way. Grab your flags and seize the day!

They will not go away. They pitch a
camp to hamper dirty work to dig a big new
road, by lorry load, and tomorrow morning

they’ll be hacking into fracking sites. She’s
raging bright, a supernova, they’re flowing over, the
ones to say the word, to make the songbird

heard above the quietened traffic. She’s
cosmographic. They’re choreographing the dance, the
forum for hearts, not globes, to be warming.

They’re storming towers of power, and I
cheer them, fearless, strong and feel
their passion to my core. I’m sure that
she and hers will make the Earth

move. They will reprove and beat
back any bulldozer that gets too close.
They post a letter from their generation to
do better than yours and mine.

They debate, exchange ideas and different views and
make the news and choose to learn and I’d
turn out for them because they know
their facts, they know they need to act, and I know that

she and hers will save this Earth.
The looters and polluters will not beat
them, they’ll turn the heat on any
climate crime. This is their time.



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