New Age Pollution What was the world like before Man's clever invention the light bulb tore The night into fragments forevermore? Man has used artificial rays To turn long nights into longer days And thus discarded his innocent ways. Was that when he started to fear the night As if darkness harbored terror and fright And bloodthirsty creatures of monstrous might? How could he have forgotten so soon That the night sky bestows the stars and the moon Instead of a burden, the dark is a boon? How could he come to prefer a false beam To the mystery, comfort, and hopes that gleam In a darkness that taught him to think and to dream? Is there now even one spot on earth Where darkness is master and lightness is dearth Where a lamp's incandescence has no worth? Is there a place of absolute night Where there is no trace of fluorescent blight No high beam, no low beam, no flares in sight? Or has light polluted, diluted, the dark Until even the Poles aren't without spark And from space the world shines like a round neon park? What was the world like long ago When just starlight or lightning made black skies glow And the nights were imaginative, treasured, and slow? How was it when man's eyes were free To see in the dark to eternity Farther than ever again they will see? When the power of dreams caused his fears to wane And his faith and his vision fired his brain Will he ever be blessed with night's darkness again? --Cat Dubie