Nature Study

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

Today’s poem has been slightly but significantly revised from the original version that appears in my collection, Love and Human Remains, Assembly Books, 2001

Now, a reader writes in to sat yesterday’s poem was “... a typical over-reaction to the amount of media attention given to fluke weather conditions this year...”

I usually respect intelligent points of view that conflict with my own, but this is hardly an intelligent response to a global crisis... well, is it?

NATURE STUDY

Brightness, falling from the sky
like summer rain, makes the flowers grow,
and the world shine
like rainbow trout on a school kid’s line
at a local stream,
who should be playing in a football team,
but his dad beat him
black and blue, with ma laid out
on the kitchen floor, and he’s not ready yet
to even take a shower

Brightness, falling from the sky
like acid rain, making the trees cry, as leaves
die like fishes everywhere
and other species, carefully laid out
under glass for science
and future generations to reason,
(or agree to differ)
how killing off a species smacks of depravation,
but biology, that’s education

Shadows, much like corpses
on the ground where skylarks once flew,
now a forgotten sound
at a spot where revelations in the clay
suggest a once-busy stream
in a world that aspired to give progress
a good run for its money,
no hint of humanity neatly laid out
under corporate glass for its endangered species
to argue rhetoric and excuses

High time humankind held Progress to its word,
encouraging a kinder, safer world...?...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2001; rev. 2021