The Times, they are A-Changing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

It was January 1964. I had just left school, still living at home and contemplating my future the first time I heard Bob Dylan singing The Times, They Are A-Changin’ on the family radiogram in the comfort of an armchair. 

A violent storm was raging outside. 

Maybe it was the poet in me that started me thinking along much the same lines as I do now, 50+ years later, that nature and humanity are at risk... not least from each other?

THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGING

Sun glaring down
with the ferocity of a Greek god
at humankind’s
insistence upon pitting itself
against nature
in the name of progress,
any capital gains notwithstanding,
climate change but an incidental factor
in a universal picture? 

Forest fires, freak floods,
forcing whole families to take flight,
come day or night,
since nature has little respect
for those in denial
of meaning it harm by providing
greater elbow room 
as and when the need, any justification
met with regeneration                                          

Does the natural world
not deserve better that such Reserves
and Zoos as humankind
feels inclined to allow, if only to teach
its past and present
to students of world order, its future
looking as bleak
as theirs, its own life forces whittled down
by matters human? 

A worldwide pandemic,
regarded by many as beyond coincidence,
but Earth Mother’s way
of protesting at humanity’s inclination
to see wildlife as sport,
green spaces expendable wherever
developers see potential
in arguing for public as well as private gains,
so “Everyone wins...” 

Come a 21^st Century virus,
targeting the human race as indiscriminately
as it has seen fit
to target birds, beasts, fishes and habitats
in the name of self-preservation,
humanity deserving the greater share
for its sheer superiority
and monopoly on matters cognitive-spiritual
engaging with its soul? 

Who’s to say the natural world
is incompatible with a universal spirituality
when grief and loss
as well as celebration are plain to see
in species other than human?
Who’s to say, too,
that were humanity fail to survive
its own demands and prejudices, there would be
no new Dawn of History? 

Human mind-body-spirit, at risk for being in denial
of the natural world’s being part of its whole...

 Copyright R. N. Taber 2021