Deep inside my swollen body, she kicks

.A tiny survivor, a fighter, a warrior queen,

So small yet she's ready to take on the universe...

...yet I feel guilt at bringing her into a world so unclean.

 

She knows not yet that she faces a future

So shaky, so insecure and unknown.

I'll love and protect her with a tigress ferocity,

But I can only do so much, one day she'll be grown.

 

She'll be faced with a world that is falling apart,

Voices of protest drowned out by the industry's roar,

Where her right to clean air is sacrificed for profit

By the corporate fat-cats I've grown to abhor.

 

Perhaps she'll be a ballerina on Broadway, New York

Pirouetting beneath the stage lights, a bird flying free

But when the ice caps melt and water begins to surge

The entire city will be engulfed by the sea.

 

Or maybe she'll be a lover of outdoors

Spend her time exploring the lands beneath the suns rays

But when the ozone in our skies is laid to its grave

The smouldering evil of cancer will be free to set ablaze.

 

Will she grow up in a world with no rainforest or polar bears?

Look back at photos of yesteryear and think, "it would have been nice to know".

Will she only know a landscape of grey concrete, smog and smoke?

And every day feel a sense of being cheated, a loss, a pang of woe.

 

And if one day, she places her hand upon her own unborn child

Will she hope and pray, as I am, that the world will right its wrong?

So her one pride and joy, for whom she feels unconditional love,

Will know the world in all its greenery, hear the sweetness of birdsong?

 

A tiny survivor, a fighter, a warrior queen

Ready to wave her flag unfurled. 

Maybe her voice will be stronger than mine,

Maybe, just maybe, she'll change the world.