WE ARE AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN. BUT AS WE BECOME INCREASINGLY POWERFUL, AND AFFECT OUR PLANET IN WAYS THAT ONCE WERE UNIMAGINABLE, WE MUST BECOME LESS LIKE CARNIVORES OF THE WILD, AND MORE LIKE NATURE’S QUIET GRAZERS.

A poem, still being edited, that speaks of how we as humans must adjust to our new awareness and our new place in the world environment. We have huge responsibilities, and as yet we are not stepping up to those responsibilities. We owe it to ourselves, to our communities and nations, and above all to our natural world to do exactly that. We are not just faced with an existential environmental crisis, we are deep now in a spiritual crisis. We have the chance to achieve some sort of spiritual awakening as we reset after this pandemic. We have the chance to heal ourselves and our natural world.

AT LAST WE MUST RECOGNISE WHO WE ARE AND WHAT OUR RESPONSIBILITIES NOW ARE.

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FULL CIRCLE

We are high in the food chain. We compete, we fight, we too often devour. But in changing times, we change. We seek to emulate those low down in the food chain, becoming ONE with each other, and ONE with ALL others. We complete the circle, and thereby are transcended.

The dream eyes of the herbivore,

So quiet in its ruminating gaze:

Gentle in its steady pace beneath its endless skies.

Then the quick, watchful, all knowing,

Calculating eye of the carnivore:

In the deadly keen imperative of its blood need.

And us. So quick and watchful too,

Ever more knowing, ever more scheming:

Ever more mired in the needless needs of ambition.

***

Then us again: so knowing now,

So aware, as the dream is in our eyes,

As at last we are gentle under our endless skies.

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Image of giraffes in Africa silhouetted against a red sunset (Courtesy of Dreamstime)