Simon Wilson

Shooting for the Moon

This year, Earth Overshoot Day was on July 28th. It’s the day when our demands on the Earth’s resources exceed its ability to accommodate us. We are writing cheques that the planet can’t cash and if we continue living this way we will need 1.75 planets to support us. If only we had listened to the sci-fi writers of the 1950s and colonised Mars.

I drive less, recycle and haven’t flown for thirty years. However, I can’t make things right on my own, and as my work colleague shows me the pictures of his trip to Disneyland I can only think that his grinning family has undone all my efforts in just two weeks. Leaving work that evening, I pass a man who shouts at passers-by about the end of days. . .

a lark
tumbles from the sky—
silence begins

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About the Author

Simon Wilson has been a poultry farmer, salesman, antique dealer, gardener, and instructor on a Care Farm. He now works in a coin shop and wishes he had tried harder at school.