Wake Up

• Natalie Tortorelli, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2019

He wanders through the cold
Once a mighty beast
Now frail and small and so cold
Staggering, searching endlessly
He needs food, he can’t survive without it
So close, yet so far away
Just over the water
The freezing, relentlessly icy water
Diminished to nothing
He won’t make it
Who is he, this once apex predator?
He is a polar bear
Starving, because the ice has melted, and he can’t reach food
Wake up
Is this how you want this world to end?
Innocent souls lost because of your selfishness?