Half Full or Half Empty?

              When you go down to the shore’s edge my friends, what do you see?

    1st Voice:    I see rock pools full of storm dirty grey water,

            red plastic rubbished, crumpled and torn,

            a sightless fish stripped stark ugly to the bone,

            thong weed fronds garishly slimy bright,

            viridian treachery of algae paths underfoot.

    2nd Voice:   I see rock pools teeming with microcosmic new life,

            a sweet peony shore-blown to its resting place,

            a delicate skeleton marvellous in its symmetry,

            kelp and bladder wrack decorating the sands,

            green algae finely patterned against the rocks.

    1st Voice:    I see men with faces harsh with bleak despair

            mirrored in a sky dark with swirling clouds,

            tearful children grapple with sharp edged rain,    

            small boats founder amongst scum tipped waves

            in an ocean polluted by an uncaring world.

    2nd Voice:   I see men take to the sea beneath the dark sky,

            speeding their orange craft through the pounding waves

            to recover the small boats’ foundering,

            and children laugh as they pit their small strength

            against the whirling rain’s boisterous battle cry.

    1st Voice:    I see a thousand fall exhausted on this sad shore,

            and the poisoned ocean give up its dead

            to a land dying of neglect under a fiery sun,

            men and children lost to a cruel oblivion,

            and my glass half empty dashed against the rocks.

    2nd Voice:   I see a shining time laid out before us,

            life and love prevailing the shore lives again,

            our glasses half full shall be replenished,

            our land once desolate will blossom anew

            and a great Te Deum fill the wide sky with glory.

                                               Naomi