Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Poetry 2017 | Page 42

I hid beneath the bushes,
And watched between the leaves.
I heard the booming of the cannons
The sound of stomping feet.
As I watch between the leaves
I saw bandit from overseas.
These were pirates, I should have known,
Hailing from the Far East.
The wall they built blocked me off
Everything that I treasured.
The trees, my home, my animal friends
But most of all my river.
The last drop I saw of that river,
Fell on my ruddy tail.
I let the cold of the drop seep in
To keep away the enduring sadness inside, I failed.
But that one drop of river,
Before splashing on my fur,
Had let off an explosion
And sent out tiny drops in a blur.
The landed on the cold stone ground,
And from the drops I saw,
Tiny flowers poking out,
Abloom, from the stone, raw.
From there, a new life began,
A new life of green.
Hopefully humans would one day understand
How much the Old Shanghai river meant to me!