A NEW WORRY

                                                         
                                                          LIX

The media like to frighten us
On a wide subject range:
Snowball earth - Greenhouse earth -
Global warming - climate change.

The more they try to scare us
The more blase we become
So another worry must be found
To which we might succumb.

They've now come up with something else
To make our lives more fraught:
A coronal mass ejection -
A CME for short.

Billions of tons of plasma
Thrown off by the sun
Could wreck our power stations -
Every single one.

The more advanced the country -
The more sophisticated the technology
The more destructive and devastating
A solar storm would be.

If a flare should strike us
How many cities would survive
Sans computers - internet - communications?
Only primitive societies would thrive.

Is there a silver lining
To this power-cut cloud?
Well, the Milky Way will be brilliant
And the Aurorae more colourfully endowed.

April 2009