Growth with Goodness
by Yuvan Aves

Here by the drying silver-biddies, under the circling sea-eagle

fisher children play a game with the Aadi wind.

Standing in a line they drop spiky seed-heads of Spinifex grass downwind

jumping, cheering, shouting, clapping they watch their tumbleweeds race down the sand.

When will they know that their home-beach is to be erased from the maps?

Their hamlets, sand dunes, flocks of stints like murmuring rain clouds, mother olive ridleys, mangroves, even the boundless Kosasthalaiyar – invisible to the port-builder.

Coal from beneath a thousand torn Songlines is to reach here soon, drown this lagoon. 

Pulicat – Mundra – Mumbai – Talabira – Bailadila

Vizhinjam – Hasdeo – Kamuthi – Godda – Galilee Basin

The Great Barrier Reef.

“Growth with Goodness” – posh words for plunder