A sultry afternoon; the sea flat, the air still.
Yellow plumes from ferries and container ships hang
like chiffon scarves across a misty summer sky.
The Sun no longer shines, it's intense and steamy heat
imperceptibly diminished by Global's blanket filter,
without which, they say, we would have fried, long before the floods.

Only a few remain on coastal lands, the smaller floods
triggering the first exodus of many. Yet we were still
in our once-envied sea-front villa when they installed the Filter.
We watched them flying back and forth to set it, get it to hang
Above; stealing Summer's gleam and blue, reducing its heat.
And now all we see is blanket cloud, where once was sky.

Do you remember sky I wonder? Do you remember sky?
Do you remember our carefree life before the floods?
How politicians debated and divided about the cause of heat?
How we sneered, ignored the rising tides, and would still
use the car to get around the block, and would hang
in nightclubs until the wee small hours, drinking filter?

We didn't love the sun back then, but now, with Global's Filter
blocking it from view and always fogging up the sky,
I yearn to see again a natural cloud just hang
innocently above the fields, and dream that floods
have not washed those fields across the roads, that still
they're metaled, clogged with heavy trucks, whose heat

would rise up from the cabs each afternoon; heat
we're now protected from by the Dimming Filter.
I've seen the cancers on the refugees, but still
I yearn to feel a breeze blow from an open sky.
Mostly I control it but sometimes the feeling floods
right through me and I swear one day I'll hang

rather than live another hour without the sun. Hang
it! Just how bad can it really hurt, this heat?
And if it gets too hot, then I can dive and swim the floods.
Perhaps it's all a lie? Do we really need their Filter?
Is it all some callous scheme to profit from the sky?
Without it blocking out our sun, would we still

suffer weekly floods? Or do they cause the heat, not cure it?
I 'm not prepared to hang around in their still and windless dome,
I'm gonna smash their Filter. I need to see the sky.