Plastic Tide: The Rising Wave of Waste Pollution

In Jakarta, where the monsoon hums,
and kampung streets stitched with song,
a mother folds her prayers at dawn,
while rivers carry their weary burden on.

Once they ran clear, whispering lullabies,
mirroring kites in the saffron skies.
Now plastic drifts like a restless ghost,
crowding the water, and haunts the coast.

A child bends low with curious hands,
scooping a fish from the sullied sands.
The fish is frail, its scales dulled gray,
its belly filled with the plastic’s sway.

Yet still the warung lanterns glow,
still the bajaj threads through the evening flow.
Jakarta breathes with a stubborn grace,
even as tides press hard in its face.

O city of resilience, city of rain,
may your rivers one day sing again.
May the tide that rises not be of waste,
but of hope reclaimed, of beauty retraced.

For every bottle cast aside,
a future dims, a shore is tied.
But with each hand that dares to mend,
the story bends its end.

The sea remembers, the mangroves yearn,
the tide can change, the waves return.
Let not the plastic write our song,
Jakarta’s spirit is surely,

far too strong.