Poem in response to Life On Land

The portrait on my grandma’s wall once depicted truth,

Of swaths of forest, grass-green hills, and the bright blue sky’s forgiving youth,

But nowadays when people pose they go inside and the door they close.

For where there were once plains and beaches and forests there are now machines arranged in rows.

The sky was once a deep clear blue, but before I was born that was taken away too.

I am told the sun rose with beauty unequaled, but since coal mining its glow was much dulled.